# Tarun Chitra

> Tarun Chitra is the New York-based co-founder and CEO of Gauntlet, a quantitative risk and onchain yield firm, and a managing partner at Robot Ventures. A Cornell mathematics and applied engineering physics graduate, he previously worked at D. E. Shaw Research and Vatic Labs. His published research examines automated market makers, staking incentives, and exchange loss-allocation mechanisms; he also co-hosts The Chopping Block.

- **Role:** Co-founder and CEO at Gauntlet
- **Organizations:** Gauntlet, Robot Ventures, The Chopping Block, NYC Salon, Vatic Labs (previously), D. E. Shaw Research (previously)
- **Education:** BA, Mathematics, Cornell University, BS, Applied Engineering Physics, Cornell University, Charter School of Wilmington
- **Known for:** Co-founded and leads Gauntlet., Member of a winning team in the 2009 International Mathematics Competition in Modeling., Co-authored An analysis of Uniswap markets, later published in Cryptoeconomic Systems.

## Career timeline

- **2000** — Appeared on the December 26 Holiday Kids Week episode of Jeopardy!, identified as an eleven-year-old from Hockessin, Delaware.
- **2011** — Graduated from Cornell and joined D. E. Shaw Research.
- **2015** — Helped start NYC Salon, a talk and discussion series spanning art, economics, science, technology, and comedy.
- **2016-2018** — Worked in quantitative research and development at Vatic Labs.
- **2018** — Co-founded Gauntlet; its early work focused on proof-of-stake economic risk before expanding into DeFi.
- **2019** — Co-authored An analysis of Uniswap markets and authored Competitive equilibria between staking and on-chain lending.
- **2020** — Became a managing partner at Robot Ventures.
- **2022** — Gauntlet raised $23.8 million in a Series B led by Ribbit Capital at an announced $1 billion valuation.
- **2024** — Robot Ventures raised a $75 million early-stage crypto fund.
- **2025** — Published Autodeleveraging: Impossibilities and Optimization; a corrected version followed in February 2026.
- **2026** — Gauntlet announced a $125 million Series C led by SBI Holdings in July.

## Achievements

- Co-founded and leads Gauntlet.
- Member of a winning team in the 2009 International Mathematics Competition in Modeling.
- Co-authored An analysis of Uniswap markets, later published in Cryptoeconomic Systems.
- Authored research modeling the competition between staking and onchain lending.
- Co-leads Robot Ventures with Robert Leshner.

## Latest updates

- **2026-10** — Listed among the hosts of a live TOKEN2049 Singapore edition of The Chopping Block published October 10.
- **2026-08** — Published Caching Cheaters on OpenRouter, examining quoted prices, cache behavior, and realized costs in AI inference markets.
- **2026-07** — Gauntlet announced a $125 million Series C led by SBI Holdings through SBI Holdings USA; the announcement reported over $1.5 billion in supplied vault assets.
- **2026-02** — Revised Autodeleveraging: Impossibilities and Optimization with corrections to its empirical analysis.

## Links

- Website: https://tarunchitra.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tarunchitra
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/tarunchitra
- GitHub: https://github.com/pluriholonomic

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/tarun-chitra
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-10-25