UAE sovereign wealth fund backed, investment firm, Further Ventures, has co led a $19 million Series A funding round in Grvt, a DEX ( Decentralized Exchange) for onchain financial privacy powered by zero knowledge technology. Earlier this year, Further Ventures had invested $5 million into Grvt noting that the investment was made to drive Grvt’S Middle East expansion and license progress.
The Series A round was led by both ZKsync, and Further Ventures. Also investing were EigenCloud (fka EigenLayer), a verifiable cloud platform that lets developers build any application; and 500 Global (formerly 500 Startups), a venture capital firm with $2.3B in AUM investing in founders with a global outlook building fast-growing startups.
As per the press release, the investment strengthens Grvt’s pioneering position as the global blueprint for the future of finance, accelerating its mission to disrupt the fragmented onchain finance ecosystem by addressing longstanding industry challenges, including privacy vulnerabilities, security, scalability and accessibility.
Faisal Al Hammadi, Managing Partner, Further Ventures stated, “Further Ventures is committed to backing the next generation of financial infrastructure from Abu Dhabi to the world. Grvt’s application of zero-knowledge proofs demonstrates how cutting-edge cryptography can underpin markets at institutional scale, and we are proud to support their vision for a truly borderless financial system.”
In August, Ethereum’s onchain volume reached over $320 billion, its highest level since mid-2021. Research also projects the DeFi sector to surge from $32.36 billion in 2025 to over $1.5 trillion by 2034. Grvt is working to solve issues faced by decentralized platforms, such as the issues of whale hunting, maximum extractable value attacks, and others which lead to billion of dollars in losses annually.
The funds raised will be used to fast track product development, engineering, including cross exchange vaults, options markets, and RWA integrations to consolidated the currently fragmented onchain financial landscape. As for the remaining funds, they will be used to support community initiatives and talent acquisition to drive global expansion.
Commenting on the raise, Hong Yea, co-founder and CEO at Grvt, stated that previously Onchain finance had been held back by privacy gaps that expose users to exploitation. He added, “By building a privacy-driven, scalable, and trustless DEX that offers a wide array of structured products, Grvt exemplifies how ZK-powered solutions will become the new normal for everyone, realizing the vision of an open and secure onchain finance world.”
Alex Gluchoski, co-founder and CEO at Matter Labs, commented: “We believe ZK is the ‘HTTPS moment’ for crypto. Just as HTTPS took the internet mainstream by adding a layer of trust and privacy, ZK will do the same for Web3. Grvt is uniquely positioned to be the most liquid and impactful application layer to help realize this vision, their dedication and progress excellently demonstrates how ZK can bring onchain finance to mainstream.”
UAE Further Ventures, backed by sovereign wealth fund ADQ has a $200 million fund that has already been allocated to investments in the digital assets, fintech and technology ecosystem. They have invested in digital asset custodian Zodia, as well as digital asset insurer Soter, digital asset infrastructure provider Fuze and earlier this year it also led a $16 million investment Series A round in French digital asset wallet and custodian developer, DFNS
