South Korea’s Hanwha Investment & Securities has completed a strategic investment of approximately $13 million reported as 18 billion Korean won in Kresus Labs, a San Francisco-based Web3 infrastructure company that builds enterprise digital wallet and asset tokenization tools. The deal, announced on February 19, 2026, converts a memorandum of understanding signed during Abu Dhabi Finance Week in December 2025 into an equity commitment. The investment comes amid a steady stream of venture activity across the sector, including recent headlines such as Novig Raises $75 Million and Fireplace Raises $1.5M, underscoring continued capital formation in Web3 infrastructure and fintech innovation.
What Kresus Labs Does
Founded in 2021 by serial entrepreneur and former U.S. Ambassador to Austria Trevor Traina, Kresus Labs develops non-custodial digital wallet technology, a tokenization engine built on the Canton Network a permissioned blockchain oriented toward financial institutions and a suite of multi-chain Web3 applications. The company states that its core differentiator is “seedless” wallet recovery, which eliminates the need for users to manage traditional 12-to-24-word seed phrases, and a security layer based on multi-party computation (MPC). Its platform is positioned for both consumer and enterprise use cases, including wallet-as-a-service offerings that allow institutional clients to deploy branded wallets.
Kresus currently employs roughly 27 people, according to PitchBook data. Traina’s background includes exits to Microsoft, Mastercard, and Intuit, and the company’s team includes former executives from Hulu, Yahoo, and Mastercard.
The Investor
Hanwha Investment & Securities is part of the Hanwha Group conglomerate and sits among South Korea’s top 15 securities firms by size. The company disclosed plans in 2025 to build its own digital asset platform and explore blockchain-native infrastructure, positioning itself for expected South Korean legislation supporting tokenized securities. Separately, an affiliated entity Hanwha Asset Management signed a partnership with the Solana Foundation in March 2025, covering education, exchange-traded product development, and custody solutions.
Son Jong-min, Executive Vice President of Hanwha’s Future Strategy division, stated that Kresus’s wallet security technology and RWA infrastructure would support the firm’s ambition to become a securities company specializing in digital assets.
Planned Use of Capital
Kresus Labs has stated the funds will be directed toward scaling its enterprise digital wallet infrastructure, expanding real-world asset tokenization capabilities, and building on-chain financial workflows. Hanwha, for its part, plans to integrate Kresus’s technology into client-facing digital asset services and to develop tokenized versions of existing financial products, the company said. Both parties described the investment as the foundation for mid-to-long-term technical cooperation that goes beyond a simple equity relationship.
Traina told Investing.com that “institutions are seeing the value of the blockchain for tokenization of assets, stablecoins, and other products that just work better on-chain,” adding that the partnership would help “accelerate enterprise adoption” and “deepen [Kresus’s] presence in key international markets.”
Prior Funding
Kresus Labs raised $25 million in a Series A round in March 2023, led by Liberty City Ventures. That round included participation from Franklin Templeton, Craft Ventures, SKY VC (formerly JetBlue Ventures), Marc Benioff, and Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Inclusive of the Hanwha commitment, Kresus’s total disclosed funding stands at approximately $38 million.
Market Context
The Hanwha investment arrives during a broader institutional pivot toward blockchain infrastructure and real-world asset tokenization. Venture capital flows into crypto startups reached approximately $50.6 billion across 1,409 transactions in 2025 a 226% increase over 2024 although nearly 44% of that sum was concentrated in just 21 M&A transactions. Infrastructure and security segments attracted more than 40% of total crypto venture investment during 2025, and wallet and custody-related deals rose by an estimated 35% year-over-year. Real-world asset tokenization alone drew more than $2.5 billion in venture funding throughout the year.
South Korean financial institutions have been among the more active entrants into digital asset services in Asia, with several major brokerages including Korea Investment & Securities, Mirae Asset Securities, and Nonghyup building tokenized-securities platforms ahead of anticipated legislation.
What Comes Next
Kresus and Hanwha have outlined a collaboration roadmap that spans digital wallet development, tokenization of financial instruments, blockchain-based infrastructure, and joint research programs including talent exchanges. Whether the partnership produces revenue-generating products will depend on the pace of South Korean regulatory action on tokenized securities and the degree to which Hanwha deploys Kresus’s tooling across its client base.
