A team of former engineers from Jump Trading, Coinbase, and Citadel Securities has raised $20 million in a new funding round for their startup, aPriori, bringing the total capital raised to $30 million. The round included participation from prominent investors such as Pantera Capital, HashKey Capital, Primitive Ventures, IMC Trading, GEM, Gate Labs, Ambush Capital, and Big Brain Collective.
Based in San Francisco, aPriori is developing an execution layer for on-chain markets, specifically designed for high-performance Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) networks. The platform aims to address common issues in decentralized finance (DeFi), including wide spreads and maximal extractable value (MEV) leakage, by applying high-frequency trading (HFT) practices. Founder Ray Song explained that the system segments order flow in real time and redistributes MEV to stakers, enhancing yields and aligning incentives across the network.
aPriori has already launched two core products: a liquid-staking platform and an AI-powered decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator called Swapr. These tools are designed to improve execution for traders and liquidity providers, bringing traditional execution standards to DeFi systems.
The new funding will be used to expand hiring, accelerate product rollouts, and deepen partnerships across the trading and staking ecosystem. Pantera Capital’s Nihal Maunder highlighted that aPriori is one of the few projects with the technical capability to bring traditional execution standards to decentralized finance, underscoring the firm’s potential in the DeFi space.
With this strategic investment, aPriori is poised to play a pivotal role in transforming DeFi markets by introducing institutional-grade trading infrastructure and enhancing the efficiency and fairness of on-chain trading.
Read more on Tech Gist Africa:
FieldAI Secures $405 Million to Advance AI-Driven Robotics for Industrial Applications
EliseAI Secures $250 Million to Revolutionize Healthcare and Housing Automation