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The startup formerly known as Metal now has $80 million in total funding to build a Layer 1 chain aimed at banks and corporate treasuries

Tue 10 Nov 2026 · 09:52 EST · 3 min read

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Alta, the blockchain infrastructure startup formerly known as Metal, has closed a $47.5 million Series A round led by Index Ventures. The announcement on X rounded it up to $48 million.

The pitch is a blockchain built for institutions that would rather not explain a compliance failure to their regulators.

Who wrote the checks

Index Ventures led the round, which the research places on November 10, 2026. GV, the venture arm formerly known as Google Ventures, also took part.

Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg and Capital49 round out the investor list. Several of those names have strong ties to Australia’s startup scene, which fits the company’s origin story.

The Series A follows an earlier $32.5 million seed round. Australian fintech Airwallex primarily backed that seed round.

Add the two together and Alta has now raised $80 million in total.

Airwallex plays a double role here. It is both an investor and a key distribution channel for Alta’s technology.

What Alta is actually building

Alta is developing a Layer 1 blockchain designed around institutional needs. Three features stand out in the description.

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Programmable compliance. Alta says compliance measures are built into every transaction. Instead of checking rules after the money moves, the rules travel with the money and get enforced as it moves.

Privacy through recursive zero-knowledge proofs. A zero-knowledge proof lets one party prove something is true without revealing the underlying data. The recursive version stacks proofs inside other proofs. An institution could demonstrate that a transaction follows the rules without exposing every detail to the world.

Stablecoin payments and tokenized assets. The chain is designed to work with stablecoin-based payments and tokenized assets.

Alta’s blockchain aims to support around 200 countries and 90 currencies for cross-border payments.

The people behind it

Alta was co-founded by Loong Wang, who serves as CEO, and Catherine Porter. Both bring notable backgrounds in crypto to the venture.

The rebrand from Metal to Alta signals a sharper focus on an institutional audience.

What this means for the market

Index Ventures and GV are participating in a specific thesis: that institutions want blockchain benefits without public-chain exposure.

Alta’s Airwallex relationship is its most distinctive distribution asset. A payments company already serving cross-border business customers gives Alta a potential path to real transaction volume.

That arrangement cuts both ways. Heavy reliance on a single distribution partner can become a concentration risk if priorities shift.

With $80 million raised, Alta now has the resources to prove the design works across around 200 countries and 90 currencies. The next phase is showing that institutions actually use it.

Disclosure: This article was edited by John Chen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.

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