Raiku Secures $11.25M Seed to Deliver Guaranteed Transactions on Solana
Raiku Secures $11.25M Seed to Deliver Guaranteed Transactions on Solana
Raiku, an infrastructure protocol built on Solana, has raised $11.25 million in a seed round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Jump Crypto, Lightspeed Faction, HashKey Capital, and others. The round brings the startup’s total funding to $13.5 million, following an earlier $2.25 million pre-seed co-led by Figment Capital and Big Brain Holdings.
Notable angel investors also joined, including Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Solana Foundation’s Austin Federa, Kash Dhanda, and DeFi builder Julien Bouteloup. The combined support highlights Raiku’s positioning as a next-generation coordination layer for Solana, designed to provide developers and institutions with predictable, reliable, and efficient transaction execution under heavy load.
Tackling Solana’s Reliability Challenges
While Solana is recognised for high throughput and speed, its performance can suffer during congestion. Robin Nordnes, Raiku’s founder and CEO, said the protocol’s core mission is to eliminate unpredictability.
“For institutions and advanced DeFi apps, speed isn’t enough,” Nordnes told The Block. “They need certainty, being able to predict when a transaction will land, and run strategies on microsecond precision. We’ve built Raiku to give developers and validators the infrastructure to guarantee that outcome.”
To achieve this, Raiku introduces a parallel execution layer with a scheduling engine that reserves blockspace directly with validators. This system enables “guaranteed block inclusion” through features such as Ahead-of-Time (AoT) and Just-in-Time (JiT) reservations. Developers and institutions can pre-confirm transactions, ensuring settlement even during network stress.
The infrastructure is further enhanced by edge computing nodes located close to transaction origin points, which enable confirmation speeds of 30–50 milliseconds. Nordnes said these features open new possibilities for market makers, oracle providers, and node operators who require reliable execution.
How Raiku Works
Raiku’s blockspace marketplace allows institutions to purchase reliable transaction slots, creating predictable execution “even under extreme load.” Nordnes pointed to specific use cases:
- Market makers can secure cancel-and-replace orders without delay.
- Oracles can guarantee timely data feeds to applications.
- Validators can generate revenue by selling predictable blockspace.
By coordinating blockspace at scale, Raiku aims to create stability for decentralised applications while introducing new revenue models for network participants.
Competitive Landscape
Raiku enters a market where several projects are addressing blockspace reliability, including Jito’s Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM), Paladin (incubated by bloXroute), and Temporal. Nordnes acknowledged Jito BAM as the closest comparable, but emphasised Raiku’s design advantages.
“Jito BAM uses trusted execution environments with plugin-driven block builders, but that approach limits flexibility,” he explained. “Raiku is written from scratch in Rust, giving validators and developers freedom of choice rather than a one-size-fits-all system.”
This architecture, Pantera Capital believes, sets Raiku apart. “Raiku addresses one of the most critical gaps in blockchain infrastructure: predictable execution at scale,” said Nihal Maunder, a partner at Pantera. “Their architecture offers real-world reliability and opens the door to the next generation of on-chain financial systems, on Solana.”
More News: Zerohash Raises $104M in Extended Series D, Hits $1B Valuation
Funding Structure and Roadmap
Both the seed and pre-seed rounds were structured as simple agreements for future equity (SAFEs) with token warrants, according to Nordnes. He declined to share Raiku’s valuation.
The company began development in July 2024 and launched its first version on devnet that December. A testnet is already live with validator partners including Kiln, Figment, Everstake, Chorus One, and Blockdaemon. Raiku v2, which will introduce an SDK for developers, is expected later this year, with a mainnet launch targeted for 2026.
Raiku currently employs around 20 people across Europe and Asia. No board seats were issued to investors in connection with the latest rounds.
Outlook
For Solana to evolve into the backbone of institutional-grade finance and advanced decentralised applications, predictable execution will be critical. Raiku’s approach—reserving blockspace directly with validators and ensuring guaranteed inclusion—may prove essential to meeting that demand.
“Without infrastructure that service providers can depend on, Solana cannot become the future of finance, computing, and information,” Nordnes said.
By bringing certainty to one of Solana’s most pressing challenges, Raiku is positioning itself at the intersection of developer demand, validator incentives, and institutional adoption.
For the latest updates on venture funding in crypto and Web3, visit our Venture Capital page.
The post Raiku Secures $11.25M Seed to Deliver Guaranteed Transactions on Solana appeared first on Ventureburn.