Gauntlet, a New York company that curates DeFi vaults and manages risk for capital deployed onchain, closed a $125m Series C on 9 July 2026. SBI Holdings, a Tokyo-listed financial group, led through its US subsidiary SBI Holdings USA. The Block reported that SBI was the sole investor. Gauntlet did not disclose a valuation for the round.
Financial Technology Partners was the exclusive strategic and financial advisor, according to the company.
“Vaults have proven themselves to be the next major revolution in financial markets.”Tarun Chitra, Co-Founder and CEO, Gauntlet
What Gauntlet does
Gauntlet describes itself as a digital asset risk and optimisation firm and as crypto's leading yield curator. It offers data-driven strategies to help capital allocators, fintechs, financial institutions and stablecoin issuers deploy capital onchain. It has been active in DeFi since 2018, and The Block says it started as a blockchain analytics company before moving to vault curation.
The company says it integrates with more than 150 fintechs and institutions and has over $1.5bn in supplied assets across its vaults. Named partners include Bitso, whose Bóvedas product offers USDC and MXNB yield through Gauntlet-curated vaults on Morpho, and CoolWallet, whose Earn menu offers stablecoin yield to more than 300,000 users.
What the money is for
Gauntlet set three priorities. The first is to expand infrastructure across traditional capital markets, including stablecoin coverage beyond the US dollar and the euro to the Mexican peso and the Japanese yen, with more foreign stablecoins planned. The second is to build out its global team using an AI-supported approach to operational scale. The third is to launch and accelerate new onchain products.
The company did not state a headcount.
What the executives said
Co-founder and chief executive Tarun Chitra said: "Vaults have proven themselves to be the next major revolution in financial markets." The Block reports that he compared the expected effect of tokenisation and vaults to the way exchange-traded funds expanded participation in equities.
Yoshitaka Kitao, representative director, chairman and president of SBI Holdings, said that as traditional finance makes an irreversible transition toward onchain finance, Gauntlet's risk management and optimisation technologies will be indispensable. The Block says he cited US regulatory progress under the GENIUS and CLARITY Acts.
The funding so far
The Block reports that Gauntlet's previous round was a $23.8m Series B in 2022, led by Ribbit Capital, when the company was valued at $1bn. The $125m Series C is therefore about five times the size of the Series B.
The company has not said whether it will add further investors, and neither the announcement nor The Block gives revenue figures.
The company's announcement says SBI led the round through its US subsidiary and names no other investors, while The Block describes SBI as the sole investor. Neither mentions a board seat. Gauntlet's announcement does not give a valuation, and The Block says the company was last valued at $1bn in 2022. The company says it will use an AI-supported approach to operational scale as it grows its global team, and gives no hiring targets.
Company website: gauntlet.xyz