<p>Aims to help decentralized finance platforms (such as Uniswap and Arbitrum) to manage risk, while optimizing profitability. The firm’s premier service, Gauntlet Risk for Defi Protocols, has tools for real-time transaction risk monitoring at decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Even during the “crypto winter” of 2023, Gauntlet was able to grow its customer base to 36 crypto platforms, up from 29 in 2022. Of 14 mid-sized and large protocols, nine are clients.</p> <p>Funding: $45 million from Ribbit, Paradigm, and First Round.</p> <p>Latest valuation: $1 billion.</p> <p>Date of last valuation: March 2022.</p> <p>Bona fides: Helps protect a total of more than $9 billion in clients’ protocol assets.</p> <p>Cofounders: CEO Tarun Chitra, 35, Chief Technology Officer Rei Chiang, 37, and Chief Operating Officer John Morrow, 36.</p> <p>Headquarters: New York, New York.</p>
Public company, workplace, funding, and market signals
Updated Aug 16, 2026
Gauntlet is a quantitative digital-asset risk, optimization, and yield-curation company. Founded in DeFi risk management, it uses quantitative finance, economic modeling, agent-based simulations, and ongoing human oversight to help protocols and institutions manage risk, optimize capital efficiency, and deploy capital into onchain yield strategies.
Primary product
Gauntlet Vaults and its proprietary risk/optimization platform. Vaults provide curated, risk-tiered yield strategies across lending, restaking, and other onchain markets; the platform supports risk parameter recommendations, market monitoring, simulations, and protocol-growth optimization.
Founded
2018
Headquarters
New York, New York, United States
Team size
Approximately 40–60 employees based on conflicting public estimates; LinkedIn/Exa lists 51 and Fortune reported 40 in 2026.
Work style
Remote
Industry
Financial technology
Sub-industry
Digital assets, DeFi risk management, quantitative optimization, and onchain asset management
Offices
Business model
Stage
Series C
Total raised
$169.6M
Latest round
Series C · Jul 2026
Latest amount
$125M
Jul 2026 · SBI Holdings, through SBI Holdings USA
Mar 2022 · Ribbit Capital
Jun 2021 · Polychain Capital
Seed extension / early-stage VC
Oct 2020 · Paradigm
Oct 2018 · First Round Capital
Leadership
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Nicholas Cannon
Chief Business Officer
Jesse Kao
Chief Financial Officer
Matt Dobel
Director, Head of Business Development and Governance
Jacob Kim
Head of Structured Yield
Rahul Goyal
Head of Institutional Partnerships
Qi Shao
Director of Engineering
Danica Espiritu
People and Operations Lead
Gauntlet emphasizes mathematical rigor, statistical honesty, community engagement, quantitative research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and transparent communication with clients. Its public materials describe a team of data scientists, economists, Solidity engineers, and high-frequency-trading veterans that monitors markets continuously.
Work style
Remote
Compensation
Public job listings and third-party sources reviewed did not provide a reliable company-wide compensation framework. Specific compensation may be disclosed in individual job postings, but no supported aggregate figures were found.
Pricing
Primarily negotiated enterprise contracts and protocol engagements. Third-party industry estimates describe major risk-management engagements as typically six-figure annual contracts; public consumer vault pricing is strategy-dependent and not presented as a simple subscription price.
Differentiators
Technology
Customers
Competitors
Estimated revenue
Approximately $5M–$25M annually. Owler gives a $5M–$25M estimate; another third-party company profile estimates approximately $8M. These are estimates, not company-reported revenue.
Estimated monthly visits
40.1K
Traffic estimate as of Jun 2026
Gauntlet ended its four-year relationship with Aave, citing difficulty navigating inconsistent guidelines and unwritten objectives among major DAO stakeholders. The departure ended a reported $1.6 million annual engagement and generated criticism from some Aave delegates.
SourceGauntlet faced public criticism over a Compound governance proposal involving Morpho, where critics alleged conflicts of interest because Gauntlet advised Compound while also receiving compensation from Morpho-related initiatives. The proposal passed, but the episode highlights governance and perceived self-dealing risks inherent in serving competing protocols.
SourceGauntlet vault TVL reportedly fell 22.84% in one week, reducing assets by approximately $380 million, primarily after an OKX pre-deposit incentive campaign ended. Gauntlet characterized the movement as a normal incentive-cycle unwind rather than a protocol failure, but the event demonstrates sensitivity of vault assets to incentives and market flows.
SourceGauntlet · Jul 2026
Gauntlet announced that Uniswap Earn would offer USDC, USDT and ETH yield through Gauntlet-curated Morpho vaults, with Gauntlet managing risk configuration, market allocation and exposure limits.
Gauntlet · Jul 2026
Gauntlet launched USDC and Bitcoin yield products on Morph, distributed through Bitget and Bitget Wallet, with Morpho and Aera infrastructure supporting the strategies.
Gauntlet · Jul 2026
Gauntlet announced a $125 million Series C led solely by SBI Holdings. The capital is intended to expand stablecoin coverage, global operations, tokenization and other institutional onchain offerings.
The Block · Jul 2026
The Block reported that SBI Holdings was the sole investor, that valuation was undisclosed, and that Gauntlet was shifting from its origins in analytics and protocol risk toward vault curation and institutional onchain capital deployment.
CoinDesk · Mar 2026
CoinDesk reported a sharp but incentive-driven decline in Gauntlet vault TVL after an OKX pre-deposit campaign ended, providing an important signal about the volatility of assets under curation.
6 jobs at Gauntlet