RTB Digital Signs $89M Minority Stake Deal Without Disclosed Funding

RTB Digital, Inc. is the product of a May 2026 reverse merger in which RYVYL Inc. acquired the original RTB Digital and renamed itself after the target. The company operates what it describes as an AI/DeFi-powered enterprise media platform — a full-stack publishing, monetization, and payments infrastructure serving third-party media properties. Following the merger, there were 13,619,997 shares of common stock outstanding, with 85% subject to voluntary lock-up agreements.

The RYVYL predecessor spent much of 2025 and early 2026 fighting a sequence of Nasdaq delisting notices tied to minimum stockholders' equity. In October 2025, the company closed a $5 million PIPE — purchasing 50,000 shares of Series C convertible preferred stock sold to RTB Digital itself — to regain compliance. In December 2025, that same facility was amended upward by $1.5 million to $6.5 million in aggregate. A further delisting notice for the same stockholders' equity shortfall arrived in April 2026. The merger closing in May 2026 finally resolved outstanding Nasdaq compliance issues, according to the company.

As of September 10, 2026, CEO James Heckman — who joined through the merger — formalized his compensation through an agreement with his holding entity, Heckman Media LLC. That agreement pays a $250,000 upfront cash bonus and ties the largest milestone equity awards to the company achieving $100 million in revenue on a run-rate basis.