Wednesday Nov 12 2025 09:30
2 min
In a landscape where Silicon Valley is increasingly shifting its focus from crypto to artificial intelligence, Vladimir Novakovski stands out as a crypto advocate, leading his startup Lighter to significant growth and securing substantial funding.
Lighter is both a decentralized exchange (DEX) and a blockchain, supporting the trading of perpetual contracts, which allow traders to speculate on the future prices of tokens. Additionally, Lighter plans to soon launch spot markets for coins like Bitcoin.
Lighter recently announced that it had raised $68 million in a new funding round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital. Other investors included Haun Ventures and Robinhood. The funding round values Lighter at approximately $1.5 billion.
Novakovski stated, "Our goal is to become the infrastructure layer for financial markets, ensuring that all trading operates fairly, accurately, and transparently."
This funding round comes at a time when on-chain perpetual contracts are gaining significant traction. These contracts allow traders to hold positions indefinitely, as long as margin requirements are met.
Lighter is entering a competitive market, but Novakovski has considerable intellectual capital to bring to bear. Prior to founding Lighter, Novakovski co-founded the AI social networking platform Lunchclub, which raised $30 million during the COVID-19 pandemic. He later transitioned Lunchclub into Lighter, retaining a majority of the staff and raising additional funding.
Lighter differentiates itself from its main competitor, Hyperliquid, by being built on Ethereum's Layer-2 network. According to L2BEAT data, Lighter has quickly become one of the top Layer-2 networks on Ethereum in terms of total value locked (TVL).
Novakovski revealed that Lighter is already profitable. He emphasized their satisfaction with their current market position, while acknowledging the need for continued growth.
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2 min
Wednesday, 12 November 2025
2 min
Wednesday, 12 November 2025
2 min
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