Alta raises US$47.5m Series A led by Index Ventures

A sceptic turns builder

Zhang founded the company with serial entrepreneur Loong Wang and Catherine Porter, a former Meta crypto developer who led global partnerships for Libra. Wang's first blockchain startup, Ren, was bought by Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda Research in 2021. A mutual friend introduced Zhang and Wang last December, and they bonded over stablecoins.

The move is notable given Zhang's past stance. In June 2025 he wrote on LinkedIn that after 15 years he had not seen a single use case where crypto meaningfully solved a real problem. He now argues that stablecoins suit AI agents making payments: a wallet with a fixed balance would let a business cap an agent's spending and avoid a card fee on every purchase.

Privacy and reach

Alta's first product targets corporate treasury teams, letting a business earn interest on spare cash in a tokenised fund, then redeem it and convert currencies when a payment falls due. To address the privacy problem of public blockchains, where anyone with a wallet address can view transactions, Alta uses zero-knowledge proofs. A bank can show a payment meets its sanctions rules without exposing a customer's identity, balance or transaction details.

Airwallex, valued at US$11 billion in its A$460 million Series H in June, plans to link Alta to local payment networks across 200 countries and 90 currencies. Alta says other banks and payment providers, including Airwallex competitors, will be able to use the network. With Seed and Series A rounds combined, the startup has raised US$114 million-equivalent in local reporting terms, according to the announcement.