Gauntlet Closes $125M Series C From SBI Holdings in Largest DeFi Infrastructure Raise of 2026

Gauntlet, the DeFi risk-management firm founded in 2018, has closed a $125 million Series C round funded entirely by Japan’s SBI Holdings — the largest capital infusion in the company’s history and a signal that Japanese institutional capital is pushing aggressively into U.S. crypto infrastructure as regulatory clarity improves under the current administration.

CEO and founder Tarun Chitra confirmed the raise to Fortune. He declined to disclose the valuation. The round closed in June 2026. The Block confirmed it as a Series C, while Crypto Briefing noted that Gauntlet started life as a risk consultancy for protocols before evolving into a yield-curation infrastructure firm — what The Block describes as a “crypto yield curator.” The company’s core business now centres on helping institutions and crypto firms allocate and manage risk around their digital assets.

The size of this round dwarfs everything Gauntlet has raised before. Its previous high-water mark was a Series B in 2022 — nearly $24 million at a $1 billion valuation, led by Ribbit Capital. This latest raise is more than fivefold that figure, written by a single backer with no co-investors, no syndicate, no U.S. venture firms anywhere on the cap table. That structure is unusual enough to be notable on its own. It also raises a direct question: why one backer, and why SBI?

SBI Holdings is not a casual player. Spun off from SoftBank in 1999 and now fully independent, the firm carries a market cap of more than $10 billion on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It ranks among the most active institutional investors in digital assets globally, with a crypto portfolio that includes stakes in Morpho, XXRP$1.10▲0.57%, Circle, blockchain firm Arc, and EDX Markets — where SBI led a $76 million Series C. The Gauntlet deal fits a pattern SBI has been building for years: methodically accumulating exposure to U.S. crypto market structure and infrastructure, positioning on the compliance-friendly side of the fence ahead of what it expects to be a favourable regulatory shift.

Kefei Lin, general manager at SBI, told Fortune plainly that the firm intends to accelerate its U.S. footprint. “I really think this year SBI will increase our investment activities and even operational activities in the U.S., because of the clarity on regulation and pro-crypto, pro-innovation, pro-competition environment,” Lin said. Regulatory clarity as a green light — that’s the explicit rationale for the deployment. SBI is clearly not waiting on the sidelines to find out whether that clarity holds.

For Gauntlet, the capital arrives at a moment when DeFi’s risk-management layer is under more scrutiny, not less. The firm’s evolution from protocol risk consultancy to yield curator tracks the broader arc of DeFi maturation: the space has moved from experimental code to managed infrastructure that institutional allocators expect to behave like traditional finance plumbing. A $125 million bet on that thesis is a wager that the next phase of DeFi growth will be driven by capital that demands risk controls, not by retail yield-chasing. The solo-investor structure also means SBI will hold concentrated influence over Gauntlet’s direction — a dynamic worth watching as the firm scales.

The broader market context for the deal is mixed. Total crypto market cap stands at $2,256.12 billion, up 1.31% over 24 hours, but the Fear & Greed Index sits at 22 out of 100 — Extreme Fear — as of the time of reporting. BBTC$63,211.00▲1.62% is trading at $63,287, up 1.82% on the day, with BTC dominance at 56.2%. EETH$1,747.72▲0.61% sits at $1,752, up 0.94%. The gap between a fearful market and a nine-figure infrastructure raise is striking. SBI is deploying capital into DeFi plumbing at a moment when sentiment is near cycle lows — a pattern consistent with institutional dollar-cost-averaging into structural positions rather than chasing price momentum. The Defiant also covered the round.

Gauntlet has not disclosed how the capital will be allocated, what new products or markets it plans to enter, or whether the raise comes with strategic obligations to SBI’s broader crypto portfolio. Those are open questions. What is already settled is that Japanese institutional capital, anchored by one of Tokyo’s largest financial firms, is now a primary funding source for U.S. DeFi infrastructure. Gauntlet’s next moves will determine whether a single-backer, nine-figure bet on risk-management plumbing was the right call at the bottom of a fear cycle.