Some startups simply build the next trend, brick by onchain brick. Kuru Labs just locked in $11.6M in Series A funding to do exactly that. And if you’ve been sleeping on DeFi’s infrastructure game, now’s the time to wake up and pour a stiff one.
Led by Paradigm, yes, that Paradigm, this round is a shot of pure octane into a team not just building a protocol, but architecting the future liquidity rails for Monad’s high-performance layer-1. And while other projects are still trying to get their gas fees under control, Kuru’s out here engineering a fully onchain central limit order book (CLOB) with fallback AMM capability. Think of it like the hybrid engine of DeFi, precision under the hood, efficiency in every block.
But don’t let the tech jargon fool you. This isn’t a whitepaper flex. It’s a play for dominance in a multi-billion-dollar market that’s tired of watching trades slip and LPs suffer. On-chain CLOBs were a pipe dream on Ethereum until Monad rolled out its parallelized EVM, and now Kuru Labs is seizing that moment. Real-time order updates. One-second finality. 10,000 TPS. And that’s not pitch deck fodder. That’s what happens when your backend is built like a Formula 1 engine and your frontend doesn’t miss a beat.
Big shout to co-founder Vaibhav Prakash, strategist, builder, and the product brain behind Kuru. His fingerprints are all over the design, the UX, and the growth strategy, and this isn’t his first DeFi rodeo. From Notebook Labs to Metapass to launching Ligo, Vaibhav’s track record reads like a roadmap of someone who understands that crypto is only as strong as the pipes underneath it.
The investor cap table reads like a DeFi all-star lineup. Alongside Paradigm, the round drew in Viktor Bunin (Credibly Neutral), Zagabond (Azuki), Tristan Yver (Backpack), Alex Watts and Jordan Hagan (FastLane Labs), Shreyas Hariharan (Monad Foundation), and more who aren’t just throwing cash, they’re placing bets on infrastructure-level impact.
Let’s get tactical. With the funding secured, Kuru is going all in on engineering. The mainnet is still loading, but this isn’t a wait-and-see play. It’s a prepare-or-get-left-behind moment for anyone serious about decentralized trading. Once Monad goes live, Kuru wants to be the liquidity hub, not just for Monad, but for EVM-compatible chains looking to level up.
A lot of DeFi projects try to disrupt. Kuru Labs just decided to replace the core trading engine with something faster, cheaper, and actually built for scale. The Series A wasn’t a signal, it was a green light. And with $13.6M in total funding across two rounds, the road ahead isn’t just paved. It’s primed for takeoff.
You don’t need to reinvent finance to win in DeFi. But if you can compress CEX-grade execution into an on-chain system that scales? Then you’re not just playing the game. You’re writing its source code.
