Blockchain database firm SxT Labs raises $20M in Series A round

Framework Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital, and Hivemind Capital, along with Microsoft’s M12 Ventures and OKX Ventures, backed SxT Labs’ Series A round.

Space and Time (SxT) Labs has announced a $20 million Series A funding raise led by Framework Ventures. The company is working on a verifiable computing layer combining artificial intelligence and blockchain technology. 

Several venture capital firms also contributed to the round, including Lightspeed Faction, Arrington Capital, and Hivemind Capital, as well as Microsoft’s M12 Ventures, DCG, F-Prime Capital, OKX Ventures, Circle Ventures, and Alumni Ventures. 

To date, SxT Labs has secured $50 million in funding to accelerate engineering and product development. 

SxT Labs has reportedly spent the last two years building its Proof of SQL, a zero-knowledge (ZK) circuit that provides smart contract developers and companies with the capability to verify data integrity. In decentralized finance (DeFi), for instance, the solution could be used to verify the credibility of borrowers based on real-time data or to track the performance of assets. 

The startup’s data warehouse allows both indexed blockchain data and centralized databases to be analyzed using SQL queries, thus providing a way to verify the integrity of data and operations on and offchain. 

In beta since April 2023, the Proof of SQL stack has reportedly processed over 5.3 billion database requests, with an average of 500,000 queries per month. According to OKX Ventures, the technology has generated over $4.5 million in annual recurring revenue and can be indexed on popular chains, such as Ethereum, Bitcoin, ZKsync, Polygon, Sui, Aptos and Sei.

The blockchain space has witnessed a surge of protocols developing similar solutions to enhance onchain infrastructure as the industry evolves and attracts more institutional players. Pi Square, for example, is also developing a ZK Circuit for a universal settlement layer for blockchain transactions. The startup recently closed a $12 million funding round led by Polychain Capital. 

“We believe this will realize the vision of blockchain technology: a world that doesn’t have to rely on trust, which will be more important than ever as AI continues to accelerate,” Nate Holiday, co-founder and CEO of SxT Labs, said in a statement.

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