{"id":3081,"date":"2026-07-09T14:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3081"},"modified":"2026-07-09T14:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:41:10","slug":"defi-veteran-gauntlet-raises-125-million-from-japanese-financial-giant-sbi-holdings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3081","title":{"rendered":"DeFi veteran Gauntlet raises $125 million from Japanese financial giant SBI Holdings"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The round closed in June and had no other participants, he said, declining to specify at what valuation he raised the money. The fundraise is the biggest infusion of capital into Gauntlet since its founding in 2018 and dwarfs the startup\u2019s Series B in 2022, when it raised almost $24 million at a $1 billion valuation in a round led by the marquee fintech investor Ribbit Capital.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3079\">U.S.-Iran talks are \u2018eerily similar\u2019 to Trump\u2019s bumpy China dealings in his first term, says top economist\u2014don\u2019t rule out further oil price spikes<\/a><\/p>\n<p>SBI, which was spun off from SoftBank in 1999 and is now fully independent, is one of the most active institutional investors in digital assets. Worth more than $10 billion on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, the company has bought up stakes in the crypto lender Morpho, the blockchain company Ripple, and the stablecoin issuer Circle.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u201cI really think this year SBI will increase our investment activities and even operational activities in the U.S., because of the clarity on regulation and pro-crypto, pro-innovation, pro-competition environment,\u201d Kefei Lin, general manager at SBI, told <em>Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n<h2>Vaults, DAOs, and DeFi<\/h2>\n<p>SBI\u2019s significant outlay of capital into Gauntlet comes as other titans of traditional finance make crypto plays, despite a down market where token prices are struggling. In June, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange established a joint venture with the crypto exchange OKX. That month, Citigroup launched tokenized deposits, or bank deposits put in blockchain wrappers. And Morgan Stanley has integrated crypto trading into its online brokerage.<\/p>\n<p>Founded in 2018, Gauntlet started as an analytics company that catered to protocols in DeFi, or decentralized finance, a sector of crypto widely seen as the Wild West that promises high yields but can also be high risk.<\/p>\n<p>A former Wall Street quant who worked at D.E. Shaw Research and then the trading shop Vatic Labs, Chitra used his analytical knowhow to stress-test DeFi protocols. Developers hired his company, for example, to identify exploits that bad actors could use to drain a project of its funds.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3077\">Trump has created a \u2018trickle up\u2019 tariff economy that means U.S. companies aren\u2019t done hiking consumer prices over import taxes<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>While Gauntlet originally focused on blockchains, many of its subsequent clients were DAOs, or decentralized autonomous organizations. Crypto developers spun up these entities to manage projects and ensure, in keeping with DeFi\u2019s core ethos, that no centralized entity had outright control over a project. But, recently, that governance model has come out of fashion. \u201cOver time, especially by 2023 and 2024, it became more clear that DAOs were kind of inefficient for managing a lot of DeFi assets,\u201d said Chitra.<\/p>\n<p>Around that time, Gauntlet began to shift its business to what it calls \u201cvault curation.\u201d Vaults are akin to mutual funds. Investors put digital assets into the vehicles and are promised yield. Those vaults, which don\u2019t custody those assets, then use investment strategies to deliver on the promised interest rate.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Gauntlet uses its analytical expertise to evaluate the risks of those \u201cyield strategies\u201d and ensure that quick market changes, for example, won\u2019t leave vault investors high and dry. \u201cWe spent all this time analyzing these protocols, and now we\u2019re helping people use them,\u201d said Chitra.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>With 40 employees, Gauntlet\u2019s current customers include the asset management giant Apollo, the crypto exchange Coinbase, and the stablecoin issuer Circle.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=3075\">Microsoft\u2019s Brad Smith on Washington\u2019s AI policy: \u2018Regulation without transparent or complete rules\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Japanese conglomerate has made bets on other crypto protocols, including the lender Morpho and the blockchain Arc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - 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