Tarun Chitra’s Gauntlet just closed a $125 million Series C. One investor. SBI Holdings. That’s the entire round.
Gauntlet is one of those infrastructure plays that doesn’t get a ton of mainstream attention but matters a lot if you’re paying attention to DeFi. They build risk simulation and automated management tools for crypto protocols. Think stress-testing lending markets before they explode.
Chitra says the next wave of growth isn’t coming from stablecoins. It’s coming from tokenization and vaults. His bet: those two categories will grow the DeFi market faster than stablecoin adoption over the next few years.
It’s not a wild take. Real-world asset tokenization is picking up steam. Vaults — automated yield strategies — are already all over Ethereum and Solana. Gauntlet’s tools sit underneath both, helping protocols manage liquidation risk, capital efficiency, and market volatility.
SBI Holdings isn’t a small player either. The Japanese financial giant has been steadily increasing its crypto footprint. A $125 million solo bet on Gauntlet says a lot about where they think DeFi is heading.
