SBI Holdings was the sole investor in the round, which Gauntlet says will fund expansion into stablecoins, tokenization and traditional capital markets infrastructure.
Gauntlet, a DeFi risk management and vault curation firm with $1.42 billion in assets under advisement, closed a $125 million Series C funding round with SBI Holdings, the Japanese financial conglomerate, as the sole investor, Gauntlet said on X Thursday.
The firm, founded by chief executive Tarun Chitra, said the capital will fund “building our infrastructure across traditional capital markets, expanding stablecoin coverage, and accelerating new onchain offerings.” Gauntlet said it aims to provide “quantitative guardrails” as institutions move capital onchain.
Gauntlet was last valued at $1 billion in 2022, when it raised roughly $24 million in a Series B round. Gauntlet did not disclose a post-money valuation for the Series C. The firm currently curates $1.42 billion across chains including Base, BNB Chain and Ethereum, according to DefiLlama.
Chitra said he expects tokenization and vault products to grow DeFi’s market faster than overall stablecoin growth over the next few years. SBI Holdings, a Tokyo-based financial services group with existing crypto and banking ventures, is backing the round as part of a broader push to link traditional finance with digital-asset infrastructure.