Author: Ben Weiss

Translated by: Tim, PANews

Since the emergence of ChatGPT in 2022, the trend of "shifting from crypto to artificial intelligence" has become popular in Silicon Valley. Opportunists are scrambling to jump from the increasingly waning hype market to newer and shinier tech fields. However, Vladimir Novakovski is going against the tide; he has chosen to transition from artificial intelligence to the crypto industry and has attracted support from numerous well-known investors for his startup Lighter, which has now become one of the fastest-growing companies in the crypto space.

Lighter is both a decentralized exchange and a blockchain. Lighter supports users in trading perpetual contracts (a type of derivative that allows traders to speculate on the future price of tokens). Novakovski stated that Lighter will soon launch a spot market supporting currencies like Bitcoin.

This Tuesday, Lighter announced it raised $68 million in a new round of financing. The 40-year-old founder and CEO Novakovski revealed that this round was co-led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital, with other participants including Haun Ventures and the online brokerage Robinhood, which rarely engages in venture capital.

According to two sources familiar with the transaction details, Lighter was valued at approximately $1.5 billion in this round of financing. Due to the private nature of the business negotiations, these two sources requested anonymity. Novakovski declined to comment on Lighter's valuation but mentioned that this deal includes equity and token allocation rights, which refers to the allocation of tokens that have not yet been issued.

In an interview, Novakovski stated, "Our goal is to become the infrastructure layer of financial markets, ensuring that all transactions operate fairly, accurately, and transparently."

From Trading to AI, and Back to Trading

Lighter's financing comes at a time when on-chain perpetual contracts are sparking market discussions. This derivative, popular in the crypto market, allows traders to hold futures contracts with no expiration date, as long as they meet the necessary margin requirements.

The so-called perpetual contracts have existed for years, but the recent rise of the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid has shaken the market. Hyperliquid co-founder Jeff Yan has successfully challenged the dominance of crypto giants like Binance with just 11 employees. Binance has begun to focus on supporting its Hyperliquid competitor Aster in response.

Lighter is entering a highly competitive market, but Novakovski possesses the intellectual capital to compete. Founders Fund partner Joey Krug told Fortune, "The main reason we invested is Novakovski and the team he built; that factor accounts for 85% to 90%."

Novakovski immigrated to the U.S. from Russia during his childhood and later made it to the U.S. national team, participating in international informatics and physics Olympiads. He entered Harvard University at 16 and began working at the hedge fund Citadel Investment Group after graduating early at just 18 years old. Novakovski said that Citadel's CEO Ken Griffin personally hired him.

Before starting his own business, Novakovski worked as an engineer and trader at several companies, with nearly 15 years of career experience. In 2017, he co-founded the AI social platform Lunchclub with Scott Wu, whom he had worked with at the investment firm Addepar.

They raised about $30 million in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Lunchclub attracted many socially anxious users seeking friendship opportunities. However, by 2022, user growth stagnated. Novakovski stated, "At that time, we faced three choices: maintain a small-scale operation to achieve profitability, try to pivot the product to be as successful as TikTok or Snapchat (though that option seemed unlikely), or shift to a new direction that we were truly passionate about."

After Wu left Lunchclub to start the AI programming startup Cognition, which is now valued at $10.2 billion, Novakovski decided to return to trading.

He transformed Lunchclub into Lighter, retaining 80% of the staff, and successfully raised new funds: $21 million in a round of undisclosed financing led by Haun Ventures and Craft Ventures in 2024. Other participating institutions included Dragonfly and Robot Ventures. With the recent round of financing, Lighter's total funding has now approached $90 million.

After two years of research and testing, Lighter officially launched in January this year. Unlike Hyperliquid, which is based on a self-developed layer one blockchain, Lighter is built on Ethereum's layer two network. Novakovski believes this is the core difference between the two competing products.

According to data from the crypto analytics site L2BEAT, Lighter's total locked value (the total amount of funds locked on-chain) has quickly become one of the top layer two networks on Ethereum. Novakovski revealed that the business has already become profitable. When asked about the comparison between Lighter and Hyperliquid, he stated, "We are quite satisfied with our current market position, but we are still working hard to grow."

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