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Startale Group has closed a $63 million Series A round anchored by SBI Group and Sony Innovation Fund, the company announced today in a statement, bringing together the two strategic partners most central to its push to build blockchain infrastructure for Japan's financial and consumer markets.
SBI contributed $50 million in a second close, adding to Sony Innovation Fund's $13 million first close from January. The two investors represent distinct but complementary bets on Startale's strategy: SBI is focused on institutional financial infrastructure, while Sony's interest runs through Soneium, the Ethereum Layer 2 network it co-developed with Startale that anchors the company's consumer product ambitions.
The bulk of the capital is earmarked for Strium, a purpose-built Layer 1 blockchain for tokenized securities and real-world asset trading developed in partnership with SBI. Strium is designed to offer near-instant settlement and continuous trading while meeting the regulatory requirements governing securities markets across Asia.
Alongside it, JPYSC — a yen stablecoin to be issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank with Startale handling technical development — is targeting a Q2 2026 launch, subject to regulatory approval, and would be the first trust bank-backed yen stablecoin in the market.
The fundraise lands at a receptive moment in Japan. Japanese Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama has publicly supported integrating crypto trading into the country's stock exchanges, and Japan is taking a more greenfield approach than the US — constructing purpose-built blockchain rails with institutional backing rather than layering tokenization onto existing exchange infrastructure. NYSE and Nasdaq are each building their own tokenized securities platforms, but both are retrofitting existing systems. Strium is being built from scratch for the purpose.
For Startale, the SBI relationship now spans equity investment, stablecoin co-development, and tokenized securities infrastructure — an unusually deep integration between a corporate backer and a portfolio company.
The consumer layer sits on top of all of this. Startale's app, built around Sony's Soneium network, is intended to give retail users a single interface for managing tokenized assets, stablecoins, payments, and onchain services — an attempt to abstract blockchain complexity for mainstream users while the institutional rails mature underneath.
