Pharos Network has raised $44 million in a Series A round, bringing its total funding to $52 million and giving the real-world-asset-focused Layer 1 an implied valuation of about $1 billion ahead of mainnet. The financing is not just a capital event, but a statement about where investors see the next phase of tokenized finance taking shape: infrastructure built for institutional use, high throughput and embedded compliance.
The company is positioning that raise as a bridge to its upcoming mainnet launch, Pacific Ocean, which it describes as central to scaling institutional real-world asset tokenization. The investor roster reinforces that message. Pharos said the round drew support from a mix of traditional finance and crypto backers, including Sumitomo Corporation’s CVC arm, Chainlink and Flow Traders, as well as undisclosed Asia-based private equity funds and regulated Hong Kong financial institutions. That blend of capital suggests the project is aiming for strategic relevance, not just valuation momentum.
Thrilled to announce the $44M Series A to scale the onchain economy ⚓
Backed by Sumitomo Corporation's CVC arm, @snzholding, @chainlink, @FlowTraders, and some of the undisclosed giants in global finance 🏛️
Pharos is building the financial-grade infrastructure to bridge TradFi… pic.twitter.com/3M5zlBWHaQ
— Pharos | Mainnet Soon (@pharos_network) April 8, 2026
A Layer 1 built around institutional workflows
Pharos describes itself as an asset-native Layer 1 designed for regulated finance rather than generalized crypto activity. Its pitch rests on a deep-parallel execution engine that the company says is capable of internet-scale throughput, with a cited target of 30,000 TPS, while maintaining EVM compatibility to reduce integration friction for developers and institutions already operating within existing tooling environments. The architecture is being sold as a way to combine performance with operational familiarity.
What sets the network’s positioning apart is its compliance-first design. Pharos says it is embedding KYC, AML and reporting functionality directly into protocol flows so that regulated institutions do not have to recreate those controls manually at every step. That is a significant part of its institutional case. The network is trying to make compliance part of the base layer rather than an external burden added after the fact.
The company has also tied that strategy to settlement infrastructure. Pharos plans to integrate Circle’s USDC and the Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol, or CCTP, to support stablecoin settlement across chains. At the same time, it has pointed to traction on its Atlantic Ocean testnet, which it said has onboarded millions of users and hundreds of millions of unique addresses, as it prepares the Pacific Ocean mainnet for launch. The argument is that the network is moving toward production with both scale ambitions and a settlement stack already in view.
Compliance may be the differentiator, but also the test
Pharos is presenting regulatory alignment as one of its clearest advantages in the race for institutional RWA activity. The company cited pilots with a publicly listed Hong Kong energy company that it said met local stock exchange disclosure requirements, underscoring its focus on region-specific regulatory workflows. That kind of implementation detail matters because institutional adoption depends as much on process compatibility as on blockchain performance.
The company also pointed to wider momentum in tokenized real-world assets, referencing market estimates that valued the sector, excluding stablecoins, at between $19 billion and $36 billion in early 2026, with some projections reaching $100 billion by year-end. Those figures were cited in the announcement and were not independently verified there. Even so, Pharos is clearly aligning its launch narrative with the broader expansion of on-chain RWA markets.
That leaves the Pacific Ocean mainnet as the real proving ground. If Pharos can deliver the throughput it has cited and make protocol-level compliance workable for banks, asset managers and other regulated players, it could reduce friction in issuance and secondary-market activity, particularly in Asia. But the same design also concentrates compliance responsibility inside the network itself, raising questions about governance, auditability and whether on-chain attestations will be recognized consistently across jurisdictions. The opportunity is substantial, but so is the burden of proving that institutional-grade infrastructure can work as advertised in live markets.