Announcing Our $1 Billion Valuation and Next Steps for the Gauntlet Platform

We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $23.8 million Series B financing round led by global investment firm, Ribbit Capital. This new round of funding is a continuation of our productive 2021, where we raised our Series A in May and became a profitable company.

This combined funding brings our total valuation to $1 billion and marks over 20X growth in our revenue in the last year alone.

$38 billion in assets now depend on Gauntlet’s financial modeling framework, signaling that the financial systems of the future are those that bridge the gap between the transparency of crypto with the risk mitigation tactics of traditional finance (TradFi).

“As the decentralized finance ecosystem develops and grows in complexity, the importance of strong risk management infrastructure becomes even more apparent,” said Nick Shalek, General Partner at Ribbit Capital. “Gauntlet’s expertise in risk management and capital optimization will ensure that the company continues to play a key role in facilitating broader adoption of DeFi — ultimately driving institutional capital inflows towards protocols that adopt Gauntlet’s risk frameworks and products. The Ribbit team is excited to partner with Gauntlet on its journey to make DeFi the most efficient global financial system.”

The rapid rise of crypto over the last five years has had a transformative effect on the financial ecosystem, but the promise of substantial returns is often diminished by uncertainty around how to measure risk. Unlike the relatively predictable structure and players of the traditional financial sector, global crypto markets operating 24/7/365 shift at a staggering rate and frequently stress test these new financial primitives. Though all transactions take place on a public ledger, the anonymity of users makes it difficult to differentiate between good-faith participants or malicious actors.

This dilemma has left many potential participants, particularly those from more traditional financial institutions, hesitant on the sidelines. And while crypto is unlikely to ever completely employ the identical techniques of TradFi or even fintech, cryptocurrency protocols should borrow best practices from these institutions to manage risk, incentives, and their treasuries.

This unique need to marry the novelty and rewards of crypto with the stability of TradFi risk modeling presents a unique challenge, but a staggering opportunity for those focused on getting this balance right.

At Gauntlet, our financial modeling platform uses battle-tested techniques from the algorithmic trading industry to inform on-chain protocol management. Our platform takes from and improves upon many of the risk assessment frameworks found in traditional finance, creating a quantitative, dynamic approach to risk management for blockchain protocols.

“Marketplace optimization is one of the most difficult engineering challenges in DeFi,” said Rei Chiang, Co-Founder and CTO at Gauntlet. “Our platform is comprised of various predictive models which we use to calibrate and improve risk management and incentives for a wide range of DeFi protocols.”

With this funding, we’d like to thank our delegators, DAOs, and investors for their continuous, unwavering support without which this milestone achievement would not be possible. Using our Series B, we plan to significantly expand our team of developers, engineers, and simulation data scientists. And, as always, we’ll continue to optimize our platform by researching new primitives in DeFi to better assist protocols as they grow and scale.

If you’re interested in learning more about our platform and company, you can get in touch with our team here. Our Co-Founder and CEO Tarun Chitra also sat down with Bloomberg to discuss Gauntlet and the future.