Gauntlet, a digital asset risk and optimisation firm, has secured $125m in Series C funding as it looks to expand its footprint across the institutions and markets driving the on-chain economy.
The round was led by SBI Holdings through its American arm, SBI Holdings USA. The fresh capital will be channelled into three near-term priorities: building out infrastructure to deepen the company’s presence in traditional capital markets, which includes widening stablecoin support beyond USD and EUR to currencies such as MXN and JPY; expanding its global headcount with the help of AI-driven operational efficiency; and deploying capital to launch and accelerate new on-chain products.
Although Gauntlet already runs vaults across the world’s biggest digital asset markets, curating more than $1.5bn in supplied assets, its remit stretches across the wider on-chain finance ecosystem.
The firm acts as an economic risk and optimisation engine, defining the conditions under which billions of dollars in protocol and institutional capital are put to work. Through partnerships with issuers, originators and financial platforms, it delivers the quantitative safeguards needed for capital to be deployed on-chain securely, catering to both retail users and institutional allocators.
For SBI Holdings, the deal fits a long-term ambition to connect conventional financial services with next-generation digital infrastructure. With digital assets now worth over $3.5tn globally, the Japanese group regards them as core building blocks of modern finance. Its roadmap includes launching a yen-denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026 and being fully prepared operationally for digital asset investment trusts and exchange-traded products as regulation matures.
The investment also arrives against a backdrop of regulatory momentum, with the GENIUS Act creating a federal framework for dollar-denominated stablecoins in the US and the CLARITY Act progressing towards broader clarity for digital assets. Gauntlet will draw on SBI’s international network to widen its coverage and support FinTech, traditional finance and tokenisation initiatives worldwide.
Gauntlet co-founder and CEO Tarun Chitra said, “Vaults have proven themselves to be the next major revolution in financial markets. Much like ETFs increased equity participation in the US equities market, we expect tokenization and vaults to increase the size of the DeFi market faster than overall stablecoin growth in the next few years.
“And we’ve raised these funds to help further our mission to make that happen globally as the world moves on-chain. With the support of a large, traditional public company with a track record of blending traditional finance with crypto like SBI, we believe we are in the best place to take our years of research and development to help bring institutions on-chain.”
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