Gauntlet, a digital asset risk and optimisation firm, has secured $125m in a Series C round as it looks to expand its footprint across the markets and institutions building the onchain economy.
The round was led by SBI Holdings through its American subsidiary, SBI Holdings USA. The fresh capital is earmarked for three near-term priorities: building out infrastructure to deepen Gauntlet's presence in traditional capital markets, including widening stablecoin coverage from USD and EUR to MXN, JPY and additional foreign currencies; expanding its global headcount with an AI-supported operating model; and deploying capital to launch and accelerate new onchain products.
Gauntlet currently curates more than $1.5bn in supplied assets through vaults operating across the world's largest digital asset markets. Its remit, however, stretches across the wider onchain finance ecosystem, where it acts as an economic risk and optimisation engine that defines the conditions under which billions in protocol and institutional capital is put to work. Through partnerships with issuers, originators and financial platforms, the firm supplies the quantitative guardrails needed for retail participants and institutional allocators to deploy capital onchain safely.
For SBI, the deal fits a long-held ambition to connect traditional financial services with next-generation digital infrastructure. With digital assets now worth over $3.5tn globally, the Japanese group treats them as core pillars of modern finance. Its roadmap includes launching a yen-denominated stablecoin in the second half of 2026 and achieving full operational readiness for digital asset investment trusts and exchange-traded products as regulation matures.
The raise also arrives against a backdrop of regulatory momentum, notably the GENIUS Act's federal framework for dollar-denominated stablecoins in the US and progress on the CLARITY Act. Gauntlet plans to draw on SBI's international network to extend its platform across 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.'