Alta, a San Francisco and Melbourne blockchain start-up co-founded by Airwallex chief executive Jack Zhang, said on 10 November 2026 that it has raised $80 million in total funding, made up of a $47.5 million Series A led by Index Ventures and $32.5 million in earlier seed money. Fintechbits checked The Block’s archive and found that Ren, the blockchain company chief executive Loong Wang co-founded and Index Ventures describes as sold, was acquihired by Sam Bankman-Fried’s Alameda Research in February 2021.

What Alta Is Building

Alta is a new layer 1 blockchain aimed at regulated institutions rather than crypto traders. Its pitch is privacy and compliance at the protocol level: balances, transactions, identities and compliance policies stay confidential, while recursive zero-knowledge proofs show that each transfer met the rules of everyone involved. Wang told Fortune that the team “wouldn’t have built an L-1 if we didn’t have to,” because existing chains lack the controls banks need. One example he gave is a block on unsolicited transfers, so strangers cannot push funds into an address uninvited.

The first product is a liquidity tool for businesses. The start-up says it will cut the cash that firms park in prefunded accounts, using tokenized assets for just-in-time funding and faster FX, and letting idle balances move in and out of yield-bearing tokenized funds. The company says it does not issue its own currency.

The company, which has 25 employees according to Fortune, previously operated under the name Metal. The new money goes to engineering, compliance and institutional partnerships.

Fintechbits analysis

Why Airwallex Matters More Than the Cap Table

Airwallex is the start-up’s anchor customer as well as its co-founder’s company. The release says Airwallex has chosen to build on the network, offering stablecoin pay-ins and pay-outs plus connections to local fiat payment networks in 200 countries and 90 currencies. Zhang said Airwallex is “proud to be an early design partner.” Capital49, one of the Series A investors, was set up by Airwallex’s co-founders, Fortune reports, and the seed round was backed mainly by Airwallex.

That gives the start-up a distribution channel most new chains lack. It also makes the arrangement circular: a payments company’s chief executive co-founds a blockchain, his company becomes its first big user, and a fund started by his co-founders invests. None of that is hidden, but it means the first test of neutrality will come when a rival payment company is asked to build on infrastructure so closely tied to Airwallex.

The Founders’ Last Crypto Bets

The founding team has done this before, and the earlier attempts ended badly for reasons outside their control. Wang co-founded Ren, which built bridges that moved bitcoin onto Ethereum. The company says Ren processed more than $13 billion in volume in 18 months. In February 2021 Alameda Research took on Ren’s core team of 10 to 20 people, according to The Block. When Alameda and FTX collapsed in November 2022, the funding Alameda had promised Ren stopped, The Block reported.

Catherine Porter, the start-up’s president, led global partnerships for Meta’s Libra stablecoin project, which was abandoned after regulators pushed back. Wang then moved into computational drug discovery with QDX before returning to blockchain.

Both histories point the same way. Ren depended on one sponsor, and Libra stalled because regulators were not ready. The new chain is designed around those lessons: compliance is built in rather than bolted on, and the timing follows the GENIUS Act, which in 2025 set US rules for stablecoins. Index Ventures says that law changed the regulatory picture for banks. The open risk is the Ren one: heavy dependence on a single partner.

The pitch also lands in a crowded field. Stripe is building its own Tempo blockchain, and card networks are moving the same way, as Fintechbits covered when Visa Direct took stablecoin prefunding into production. Its agentic angle, letting AI agents pay with proof of authority, overlaps with what Fintechbits explained in what agentic payments are. The difference it claims is privacy that banks can use, and it has named no bank client.

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Alta?

Alta was co-founded by Loong Wang, its chief executive, Catherine Porter, its president, and Jack Zhang, the co-founder and chief executive of Airwallex. Wang previously co-founded Ren and QDX, and Porter led global partnerships for Meta’s Libra project.

How much has Alta raised?

Alta has raised $80 million in total: a $47.5 million Series A led by Index Ventures, with GV, Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg and Capital49, plus $32.5 million in seed funding. The valuation was not disclosed.

What will Alta do first?

The first product is aimed at business liquidity. It uses tokenized assets to reduce cash held in prefunded accounts, speed up FX and let idle balances earn yield, with Airwallex as the launch partner.

What to Watch Next

The test is customers beyond Airwallex. Watch for the first bank or payment provider other than Airwallex to announce it is building on Alta, a launch date for the liquidity product, and any disclosure of transaction volumes once Airwallex’s stablecoin pay-ins and pay-outs go live. A named regulated bank would do more for Alta’s neutrality claim than any further funding.