Gauntlet (https://www.gauntlet.xyz/), a New York-based DeFi risk management and yield optimization platform, has raised $125 million in Series C funding led by SBI Holdings. The firm curates institutional-grade vaults across lending, restaking, and real-world asset strategies, backed by quantitative models that monitor $42 billion in assets. The capital will expand global operations, stablecoin coverage to MXN and JPY, and infrastructure scaling.
SBI Backs DeFi Infrastructure Push
The timing aligns with accelerating institutional adoption of onchain finance. Chaos Labs raised $55M Series A in August 2024, while Sentora secured $25M Series A in May 2025. Gauntlet's approach combines risk modeling with curated vaults, addressing gaps in protocol parameter optimization and yield accessibility for fintechs and institutions.
Simulation Models Fill Data Gaps
DeFi protocols lack historical records comparable to traditional finance, making simulation essential for risk estimation. Gauntlet processes 380 billion data points refreshed six times daily across its platform. Its models have protected $42 billion in client assets while managing $1.5 billion in vault TVL across 70-plus strategies on 10-plus chains. Competitors like Sommelier and Yearn Finance emphasize decentralization but lack Gauntlet's quantitative scale.
Vaults Bridge TradFi and DeFi
Gauntlet shifted from DAO-focused consulting to vault curation after identifying inefficiencies in decentralized governance. Products include risk-tiered Morpho lending vaults, cross-chain stablecoin strategies like gtUSDa with 11% backtested APY, and the first levered RWA vault in partnership with Apollo and Securitize. Aera infrastructure allows platforms to build custom yield offerings.
"Vaults have proven themselves to be the next major revolution in financial markets. Much like ETFs increased equity participation in the U.S. equities market, we expect tokenization and vaults to increase the size of the DeFi market faster than overall stablecoin growth." — Tarun Chitra, CEO
SBI Signals TradFi Convergence
SBI Holdings, a Japanese financial conglomerate with over 720 group companies, led the round as sole investor. The firm plans a yen-denominated stablecoin launch in H2 2026. This investment validates Gauntlet's role in providing quantitative guardrails as institutions move capital onchain, following SBI's concurrent $76 million investment in EDX Markets.
DeFi Market Expands Rapidly
The DeFi market stands at $37.3 billion in 2026 and is projected to reach $1.4 trillion by 2033, growing at a 57% CAGR per Grand View Research. The broader risk management market is $17.23 billion with 15.4% CAGR through 2033 per Coherent Market Insights. Regulatory clarity from U.S. acts and RWA tokenization drive capital into platforms offering both yield and risk infrastructure.
Lean Team Scales Globally
Founded in 2018 by Tarun Chitra, a former D.E. Shaw quant, Gauntlet operates with just 40 employees while serving clients including Coinbase, Circle, and Apollo. The Series C will prioritize hiring to support expansion into new markets and asset classes.
Expansion Targets Stablecoins and Infrastructure
With deployments already powering yield for 500,000 users via KAST and absorbing $775 million single deposits, Gauntlet will grow its global team, add MXN and JPY stablecoin coverage, and scale vault infrastructure across additional chains.