Alta Raises $80 Million to Build the Infrastructure for Onchain Global Banking

Alta, a financial infrastructure company building the foundation for the next generation of global finance, has announced $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.

Built for Institutions, Not Just Crypto

Alta is developing institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure that lets financial assets and products move instantly, globally, and programmatically. Unlike existing infrastructure built primarily for crypto-native applications, Alta is designed from the ground up to meet the privacy, compliance, neutrality, and operational requirements of regulated financial institutions — while supporting transactions across assets, chains, and jurisdictions.

The timing is deliberate. Alta’s 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 remains fragmented and riddled with inefficiency. Moving money across borders can take days, and institutions must hold substantial cash buffers to maintain liquidity across jurisdictions and payment networks. Globally, an estimated $4 trillion sits tied up in prefunded accounts.

Alta is building a more efficient alternative — combining instant settlement with global payment connectivity, foreign exchange, and treasury management in a single system.

Privacy and Compliance, Built In

At the core of Alta’s technology is a new blockchain architecture built on recursive zero-knowledge cryptography. It allows institutions to keep balances, transactions, identities, and compliance policies private — while still cryptographically proving that every transaction meets the required rules.

Designed to operate across assets, chains, and jurisdictions, Alta pairs programmable compliance with the controls and scalability that institutional finance and agentic commerce demand.

“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.”

Airwallex Signs On

Leading financial platform Airwallex has chosen to build on Alta, connecting its global payments infrastructure with Alta’s blockchain technology. Beyond pay-ins and pay-outs via stablecoins, the collaboration will support connectivity to local fiat payment networks across 200 countries and 90 currencies.

That reflects Alta’s broader positioning: neutral infrastructure that banks, payment providers, and other financial institutions can all build on.

The First Product: Smarter Liquidity

Alta’s first product is designed to help businesses manage liquidity more efficiently and free up the cash buffers trapped in prefunded accounts. Built on tokenized assets, it enables just-in-time funding and more efficient foreign exchange — and lets businesses move instantly 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.

The new funding will support continued development of Alta’s blockchain infrastructure, the expansion of its institutional partnerships and global financial connectivity, and the growth of its engineering and compliance teams.