Index Ventures Leads $47.5 Million Series A for Alta as Airwallex Co-Founder Bets on Compliance-Native Blockchain for Banks
Index Ventures Leads $47.5 Million Series A for Alta as Airwallex Co-Founder Bets on Compliance-Native Blockchain for Banks #
Alta, a blockchain infrastructure startup co-founded by Airwallex chief executive Jack Zhang, has closed a $47.5 million Series A round, bringing its total capital raised to $80 million. The company is building a private settlement network for regulated financial institutions.
Index Ventures led the Series A, with GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, and Capital 49, an investment vehicle established by Airwallex’s founders, also participating. The latest round follows $32.5 million in earlier seed financing.
Formerly operating under the name Metal, Alta is developing a Layer 1 blockchain with privacy, compliance controls, and identity and authorisation built directly into the protocol rather than layered on top. The technology uses recursive zero-knowledge cryptography, which allows transactions to be mathematically verified without disclosing the underlying data, a feature the company says is essential for institutions subject to strict data-protection and anti-money-laundering obligations.
Alta CEO and co-founder Loong Wang said in the company’s announcement that existing public blockchains were not designed for the requirements of global financial institutions, and that Alta was taking a “fundamentally different approach” by embedding privacy and programmable compliance at the base layer. The goal, according to the company, is to allow banks, payment providers, and enterprises to move tokenised assets and settle payments across borders without exposing transaction ledgers to the public internet.
According to Fintech Global, Alta is targeting a market it estimates holds some $4 trillion in prefunded correspondent-banking accounts, capital that institutions must park in advance to guarantee cross-border payment settlement. Alta argues that programmable blockchain infrastructure can reduce pre-funding requirements and cut settlement times sharply.
Airwallex, the global payments platform that Zhang co-founded and continues to lead, has signed on as an early design partner. Zhang has previously expressed scepticism about crypto.
Alta said it will use the new capital to advance its core blockchain technology, expand institutional partnerships and global payment connectivity, and grow its engineering and compliance teams.
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