Tarun Chitra is a big name in decentralized finance. In 2018, he founded the crypto risk management platform Gauntlet, which grew to a $1 billion valuation as of last year, and then in 2022 he cofounded Robot Ventures, a venture capital firm that backs fintech and crypto companies. Now, Chitra is back again with his newest project: Aera, a decentralized protocol to help decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, manage their finances.
On Thursday, Chitra, who once worked at a Wall Street trading firm, announced that the Aera Foundation raised $8 million from the crypto offshoots of two investment giants: Bain Capital and Jump Trading. Bain Capital Crypto led the round, which was exclusively a pre-sale of Aera's cryptocurrency, Chitra told Fortune. He declined to provide any details about a valuation.
