Babylon
71 employees on LinkedIn · 10 known investors
Babylon Labs develops trustless infrastructure that enables Bitcoin to be used as collateral in decentralized finance and through a Bitcoin staking protocol for blockchain validation. The platform allows users to lock native Bitcoin without wrapping or custodial risk.
Also known as Babylon · Babylon Labs
Founders & leadership
Investors · 10
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements$15M disclosed across 1 of 2 rounds · 2024–2026
- $15MraisedJan 2026 · 3 sourcesSource ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Company profile
researched Aug 2026Babylon (Babylon Labs) develops decentralized protocols that make native Bitcoin usable as collateral and as economic security without wrapping, pegging, bridging or handing custody to an intermediary. Its collateral product is a Trustless Bitcoin Vault (TBV, also referred to as BTCVaults): a user locks native BTC into a vault, the collateral state is made verifiable on Ethereum, the user borrows stablecoin liquidity through Aave v4, and the BTC is unlocked after repayment. A testnet for TBV is publicly available from the company website.
Babylon also operates a Bitcoin staking protocol. Per its open-source repository, the protocol suite provides security sharing between Bitcoin and proof-of-stake systems through two interconnected components: Bitcoin timestamping, which submits succinct verifiable timestamps of arbitrary data such as PoS blockchains to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin staking, which lets Bitcoin holders provide economic security to decentralized systems through trustless, self-custodial staking. Participants in the staking protocol include Bitcoin stakers, who lock bitcoin within their own wallet to help validate other chains and receive rewards, and finality providers, who validate PoS chains and earn rewards from delegations.
The company was co-founded in 2021 by Stanford professor David Tse and Fisher Yu. It has no CEO; Tse is research scientist and Yu is CTO. Tse has taught at Stanford for more than a decade, where he runs a blockchain research lab, holds a PhD from MIT, and previously taught at UC Berkeley for 18 years.
Founding story
David Tse co-founded Babylon in 2021 with Fisher Yu. Tse, a Stanford professor who runs a blockchain research lab there, said he started the company to give his academic research a broader purpose, describing academic deliverables as research papers that can only be appreciated by a few people and a startup as the natural way of converting research and ideas into a product people can use.
Business model
Babylon operates decentralized protocols rather than a custodial intermediary service. As of January 2026 the company did not generate revenue, but stated it hoped to do so after the launch of its Aave integration.
No revenue as of January 2026; the company said it hopes to generate revenue following its planned launch with Aave.
Traction
The company had more than 40 employees as of January 2026 and had raised $15 million from a16z crypto. A TBV testnet is live, with mainnet integration with Aave planned for Q2 2026. Its open-source flagship repository had 101 stars, 114 forks and 1,246 commits, and the GitHub organization lists 58 repositories with activity through 2026.
Latest developments
On 7 January 2026 Fortune reported that Babylon announced a $15 million raise from a16z crypto, without disclosing a valuation, and that it plans to integrate its BTCVaults protocol with Aave in Q2 2026. Repository activity across the babylonlabs-io GitHub organization continued into August 2026, including an Aave v4 arbitrage and liquidation bot suite for testing Bitcoin-collateralized positions through the Trustless Vault protocol.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history, risks & controversies
Market position
Babylon positions itself as a decentralized alternative to centralized intermediaries that Bitcoin holders normally use to generate yield. Co-founder David Tse identifies the company's competition as centralized services such as Coinbase, Kraken and Tether. Its website frames the staking protocol against a potential $1 trillion in delegations from Bitcoin holders.
Users retain custody and control of their private keys; Bitcoin is not swapped for wrapped BTC or stablecoins held by a third party, and there is no wrapping, pegging or bridging to another network. Collateral is locked in a self-custodial vault while remaining verifiable to an external chain.
Technology
Trustless Bitcoin Vaults lock native BTC on the Bitcoin network, with the collateral state made verifiable on Ethereum so that stablecoins can be borrowed via Aave v4 and BTC released on repayment. The staking protocol requires no wrapping, pegging or bridging, keeping bitcoin within the holder's own wallet. The underlying chain software (babylond) is written primarily in Go and implements Bitcoin timestamping and Bitcoin staking modules; associated repositories include finality-provider, CosmWasm contracts for Cosmos-based integrations, a staking indexer and API service, and a TypeScript frontend toolkit. Building the node requires Go 1.25, and validators are advised to run quad-core amd64 CPUs, 32GB RAM, 1TB NVMe storage and a 100Mbps connection.
Go-to-market
Distribution is through open-source protocol software and a public testnet, plus ecosystem integrations — notably a planned integration with the Aave v4 lending protocol in Q2 2026 that supplies borrowing liquidity against Bitcoin-backed vault positions. The company also publishes developer tooling and documentation, and cites a growing ecosystem of partners around TBV.
Bitcoin holders seeking yield or liquidity from their holdings without relinquishing custody or private keys; validators and finality providers seeking rewards from securing proof-of-stake chains; developers building staking applications on the protocol.
Geography
Not established by the available sources.
History
The company was co-founded in 2021 by David Tse and Fisher Yu. It has since released open-source software for its protocol suite, including the core babylond chain node, finality-provider tooling, CosmWasm contracts for Babylon integration, a staking API service and indexer, and a frontend monorepo for building staking dApps. In January 2026 Babylon announced a $15 million raise from a16z crypto and disclosed plans to integrate with the Aave lending protocol in the second quarter of 2026.
Risks & controversies
The company had no revenue as of January 2026 and its revenue prospects depend on the planned Aave launch. Note that several widely circulated sources about a company named 'Babylon' refer to unrelated entities: the UK digital healthcare company Babylon Health (founded 2013 by Ali Parsa, which entered insolvency in 2023) and a Palo Alto-based Bitcoin staking company that raised $70 million led by Paradigm in May 2024; these are not attributed to this profile.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Competitors · 10
by search overlap
Companies competing with Babylon for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
Timeline · 4
launches, deals, and filingsBabylon announced it raised $15 million from a16z crypto, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz. Co-founder David Tse did not disclose the company's valuation.
$15M source ↗
Babylon's website offers a public TBV testnet allowing users to deposit native BTC into a Trustless Bitcoin Vault, make collateral state verifiable on Ethereum, and borrow stablecoins through Aave v4.
Stanford professor David Tse co-founded Babylon in 2021 with Fisher Yu. The company has no CEO; Tse serves as research scientist and Yu as CTO.
The company said it plans to integrate its BTCVaults/Trustless Bitcoin Vault technology with the Aave lending protocol in the second quarter of 2026, enabling stablecoin borrowing against Bitcoin collateral via Aave v4.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
In the news
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Babylonbabylonlabs.io · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Babylon do?
- Babylon builds decentralized protocols that let holders use native, self-custodied Bitcoin as DeFi collateral and for staking.
- Who founded Babylon?
- Babylon was founded by Fisher Yu.
- Who are Babylon's investors?
- Babylon's investors include a16z crypto, Alumni Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Basecamp Fund, Castle Island Ventures, Hack VC, IOSG Ventures, L2 Iterative Ventures (L2IV) and 2 more.
- How much funding has Babylon raised?
- Babylon has disclosed $15M raised across 1 of its 2 known rounds.