Alta, a financial infrastructure company building the foundation for the next generation of global finance, today announced it has raised $80 million in total funding, including a $47.5 million Series A round and $32.5 million in previous seed financing. The Series A was led by Index Ventures, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, and Capital 49.
Alta is building new institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure that enables financial assets and products to move instantly, globally, and programmatically. Unlike existing infrastructure built primarily for crypto-native applications, Alta is designed to meet the privacy, compliance, neutrality, and operational requirements of regulated financial institutions while supporting transactions across assets, chains, and jurisdictions. Its launch comes as regulatory clarity improves and institutional demand for tokenized finance accelerates.
“Existing blockchains aren’t designed for the privacy and compliance requirements of global financial institutions,” said Loong Wang, Co-Founder and CEO of Alta. “We’re taking a fundamentally different approach, building privacy, programmable compliance, and identity and authorization directly into the blockchain. This will enable money and assets to move instantly, globally, and securely, whether it’s a bank settling a transaction or an AI agent making a payment.”
Today’s global financial system is fragmented and still has many areas of inefficiency. Moving money across borders can take days, and institutions must maintain substantial cash buffers to ensure liquidity across jurisdictions and payment networks. An estimated $4 trillion is tied up in prefunded accounts globally. Alta is building a more efficient system, combining instant settlement with global payment connectivity, foreign exchange, and treasury management capabilities.
At the core of Alta’s technology is a new blockchain architecture built on recursive zero-knowledge cryptography. It enables institutions to keep balances, transactions, identities, and compliance policies private while verifying that transactions meet the required rules. Designed to work across assets, chains, and jurisdictions, Alta combines programmable compliance with the controls and scalability needed for institutional finance and agentic commerce.
“Technology alone won’t be enough to modernize global finance. Financial institutions need infrastructure they can trust, with clear controls over who they’re transacting with, where money can move, and how sensitive information is protected,” said Catherine Porter, Co-Founder and President of Alta. “As AI agents increasingly make financial decisions and execute transactions, that trust becomes even more critical. Privacy, compliance, and accountability just aren’t barriers to innovation – they’re what will allow it to scale.”
Leading financial platform Airwallex has chosen to build on Alta, connecting its global payments infrastructure with Alta’s blockchain technology. In addition to pay-ins and pay-outs via stablecoins, the collaboration will support connectivity to local fiat payment networks across 200 countries and 90 currencies. Alta is designed as neutral infrastructure that banks, payment providers, and other financial institutions can build on.
Alta’s first product will help businesses manage liquidity more efficiently and reduce cash buffers tied up in prefunded accounts. Built on tokenized assets, it will enable just-in-time funding, more efficient foreign exchange, and allow businesses to instantly move in and out of yield-bearing tokenized assets, maximizing the interest earned on otherwise idle capital.
“With the rise of agentic banking and programmable payments, stablecoins are becoming an important vector for settlement. Financial institutions need blockchain infrastructure that is private, neutral, regulated, and connected to global fiat rails. Alta is building exactly that,” said Jack Zhang, Co-Founder of Alta and Co-Founder/CEO of Airwallex. “We’re proud to be an early design partner and help Alta deliver onchain finance at institutional scale.”
Backed by Leading Global Investors
Alta’s investors bring together expertise across financial technology, enterprise infrastructure, and blockchain innovation.
“Loong is the sort of technologist you only meet a few times in a career. After a major fintech exit from his first company, he went on to run the largest supercomputing calculation in history at its time, then discovered a cancer drug now in human trials. With Catherine’s exceptional track record of bringing industry leaders to the table and Jack’s understanding of the problem space, this is a team we had to back,” said Jan Hammer, Partner at Index Ventures.
“The Alta founders have successfully built and scaled multi-billion-dollar technology and financial infrastructure businesses, and understand how to de-risk complex institutional execution. We have been impressed with their combination of deep-tech blockchain engineering, institutional go-to-market knowledge, and vision for scale, and we look forward to supporting them in their mission to reimagine financial infrastructure at its core,” said Tom Hulme, Managing Partner at GV.
“Stablecoins solved speed. Alta is solving trust, with privacy by default and compliance written into the settlement itself, so the institutions that hold the world’s money can finally use them. We’ve known Loong and Jack for years, and watching two of Melbourne’s best join forces, with Airwallex anchoring Alta from day one, is the kind of moment this job is for. Catherine is more than their match. She built the enterprise stablecoin playbook at Meta before most people knew one existed, and together she and Loong are the most complete founding team we’ve seen in a long time,” said Michael Tolo, General Partner with Blackbird Ventures.
“We are thrilled to be participating in Alta’s Series A. Alta brings a combination of a world class team with incredible domain expertise solving an important problem at exactly the right time. We are so excited to have the opportunity to back Loong and Catherine and their team early in their journey,” said Paul Bassat, Co-Founder and Partner at Square Peg.
“We have backed Alta since its founding, and what stands out about this team is how fast they turn conviction into working infrastructure. Global finance won’t move onchain without institutional-grade readiness, and that’s exactly what Alta is demonstrating, one partner at a time,” said Chris Cheng, Managing Director at Capital 49.
The new funding will support continued development of Alta’s blockchain infrastructure, expansion of its institutional partnerships and global financial connectivity, and growth of its engineering and compliance teams.