Summary
SBI Holdings closed a $125 million Series C for DeFi risk-curation firm Gauntlet as the sole investor, days after doing the same for institutional crypto exchange EDX Markets ($76M). The Japanese financial giant is quietly funding the infrastructure behind tokenized finance while most of the market watches token prices. Gauntlet, founded in 2018 by Tarun Chitra, John Morrow, and Rei Chiang, started as a protocol stress-testing platform and has evolved into "vault curation" — managing over $1.5 billion in assets across 150+ fintechs and institutions.
The round dwarfs Gauntlet's previous $23.8M Series B in 2022 (led by Ribbit Capital at a $1B valuation). SBI's decision to go solo — no syndicate, no co-lead — signals a strategy of speed and control. Gauntlet plans to push stablecoin coverage beyond USD/EUR into MXN, JPY, and other fiat-backed stablecoins, and lean harder on AI tooling. The yen expansion is no coincidence: SBI has deep roots in Japan's financial system, and a risk engine that already speaks yen is more useful to SBI's institutional clients.
Key Facts
- SBI Holdings as sole investor in Gauntlet's $125M Series C
- Follows SBI's solo $76M investment in EDX Markets days earlier
- Gauntlet: DeFi risk curation, vault management — $1.5B+ assets, 150+ institutions
- Founded 2018 by Tarun Chitra, John Morrow, Rei Chiang
- Previous round: $23.8M Series B in 2022 at $1B valuation (Ribbit Capital)
- Plans: expand stablecoin coverage to MXN, JPY; scale AI tooling
- SBI's broader digital asset portfolio: Morpho, Ripple, Circle, EDX Markets
- SBI strategy: speed and control over risk-sharing — writing solo checks
Why It Matters
SBI Holdings is emerging as the most aggressive institutional investor in crypto infrastructure globally, writing solo $100M+ checks for companies most investors have never heard of. Gauntlet is the kind of unglamorous dependency that the entire DeFi ecosystem relies on — if a lending protocol or institutional vault misprices risk, Gauntlet's models are often the ones catching it before a liquidation cascade. SBI's willingness to fund this infrastructure alone, rather than syndicating risk, signals sovereign-scale conviction in tokenized finance.