Subzero Labs Emerges with $20M Raise to Build the First Real World Network
New York, New York, August 1st, 2025, Chainwire
- Subzero Labs emerges from stealth after raising a $20M initial financing round led by Pantera Capital with participation from Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, Susquehanna Crypto, Mysten Labs, Fabric Ventures, Mirana Ventures amongst others.
- Developer-first founders come from Mysten Labs and Diem and have attracted top talent from Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, VMWare, Solana, EigenLayer, Coinbase, NEAR Protocol and more.
- Subzero Labs is building Rialo, a radical rethinking of decentralized programmable networks that empowers builders to create and launch internet‑scale decentralized applications, without the constraints of legacy network architecture.
Today, Subzero Labs announces its emergence from stealth with a $20 million initial financing round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from other top-tier investors including Variant, Coinbase Ventures, Hashed, Susquehanna Crypto, Mysten Labs, Fabric Ventures, Flowdesk, Mirana Ventures, and more.
Founded by Ade Adepoju and Lu Zhang, early engineers at Mysten Labs who contributed to the Sui network, Subzero Labs draws on deep technical expertise from both Web2 and Web3. Prior, Zhang built Diem, Meta’s crypto initiative, and large-scale AI/ML infrastructure at Meta and Google, while Adepoju developed distributed systems at Netflix and advanced microchips at AMD. With years of deep involvement in multiple layer-1 protocols and decentralized applications, Adepoju and Zhang identified a significant gap between the goals of network infrastructure and app developers; a gap they will close by rebuilding decentralized infrastructure from first principles.
The Subzero Labs team has attracted top talent from Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, VMware, Solana, EigenLayer, Polkadot, Coinbase, NEAR Protocol, and other industry-leading organizations.
For years, blockchain teams have obsessed over raw transaction speed. But high TPS alone doesn’t make decentralized apps robust or useful. Without a seamless interface to real‑world data and services, even the fastest blockchains produce apps that feel disconnected, high friction, boring to users, and frustrating for builders. Until we fix real‑world integration and free builders from tangled and fragmented infrastructure, decentralized apps will remain clunky, costly, and painfully slow to create.
Subzero Labs is building Rialo, a network that gives developers the building blocks to create global-scale decentralized apps, without integrating brittle third-party services. Rialo makes it possible to build decentralized apps with the responsiveness and reactivity of Web2 at a fraction of the complexity by offering native web connectivity, event-driven transactions, built-in privacy, among others while remaining infinitely scalable.
Rialo leverages RISC-V architecture and adds Solana VM compatibility, letting teams deploy existing programs out of the box while unlocking a richer feature set. From tokenized assets, to prediction markets, to global trading platforms, to AI agent orchestration, developers can build with familiar tools while delivering apps that outperform their centralized counterparts in both cost and user experience.
“Instead of shipping innovative products, too many brilliant teams are burning their runway gluing various pieces of poorly designed infrastructure together,” said Ade Adepoju, Co-Founder of Subzero Labs. “We believe infrastructure should be invisible, fast, intuitive, and scalable. Rialo solves this and unlocks entirely new classes of applications that simply weren’t possible before.”
“Rialo is the only full stack network for real world applications – built by leading industry developers for developers,” said Paul Veradittakit, Managing Partner of Pantera Capital. “It’s rare to see such a high concentration of talent to drive this vision. We believe under Ade and Lu’s leadership the Subzero Labs will deliver the infrastructure that finally empowers developers to create decentralized products that are intuitive, useful, and relevant to everyday users.”
“What stood out to us was how Rialo makes off-chain interaction feel native — not bolted on,” said Baek Kim, General Partner of Hashed. “With the devnet already demonstrating event-driven execution and native web integrations, we see early signs of a system that can lower the barrier for real-world use cases. Subzero Labs isn’t just optimizing infra — they’re rethinking how developers and external systems actually connect to it,”
“We are excited about the opportunity that comes with the growing range of real world assets.” said Bart Smith, Global Head of Digital Asset Strategy at Susquehanna International Group (SIG).
Rialo private devnet is now live. Subzero is currently onboarding early development partners. Developers interested in testing Rialo ahead of its public launch can join the waitlist.
About Subzero Labs
Subzero Labs is rearchitecting decentralized infrastructure to deliver network power without legacy constraints. The company’s flagship network, Rialo, combines real world connectivity and event driven execution, enabling teams to ship production ready applications with the same ease as Web2 development. Founded by veterans of Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, TikTok, Citadel, Mysten Labs, Solana, and other leading protocols, Subzero Labs is transforming decentralized network into full stack product platforms, unlocking real world use cases for developers, enterprises, and consumers.