Who Owns Lighter DEX? Founder Vladimir Novakovski, Team, Investors, Funding and Valuation (2026)

Lighter perp DEX is owned and operated by Lighter, Inc. and its engineering entity Elliot Technologies, Inc., US companies founded in 2022 by Vladimir Novakovski, who is CEO. The company has raised about $89 million, most recently $68 million in November 2025 at a valuation of roughly $1.5 billion, led by Founders Fund and Ribbit Capital with participation from a16z, Robinhood Ventures, Dragonfly, Haun Ventures, Lightspeed and Craft Ventures. The LIT token is allocated separately: 26% to the team, 24% to investors, the rest to the community and ecosystem. Knowing who is behind the exchange, who funds it and how they are paid tells you how aligned they are with you as a trader; that is what this profile gives you. Verified September 2026.

Founder and CEO: Vladimir Novakovski

• Education: graduated from Harvard at 18 (mathematics and computer science).
• Citadel: spent roughly fifteen years in quantitative trading and engineering at Citadel, one of the largest market makers and hedge funds in the world. This is the origin of Lighter's obsession with matching-engine performance and fair liquidation.
• Quora: led machine-learning work.
• Addepar: engineering leadership at the wealth-management software company.
• Lunchclub: co-founded the AI-powered professional networking startup in 2017. About 80% of Lighter's original engineering team came from Lunchclub.
• Lighter: founded 2022. The pitch, in his words to Fortune, was to bring the guarantees of exchanges he had worked with at Citadel to DeFi, with cryptographic verification instead of trust.
• Public roles: appointed in 2026 to one of the 43 seats on the CFTC's Innovation Advisory Committee, which met for the first time on August 20, 2026.

He is often confused in search with Vlad Tenev, Robinhood's CEO, who advised Lighter and whose company both invested in and integrated with it. "Vlad" at Lighter usually means Novakovski.

The team

Lighter is engineering-heavy and small relative to its volume. Known characteristics:

• Core team drawn from Lunchclub and Citadel networks.
• Heavy representation of competitive programming alumni (IOI, IMO, ICPC medalists), which fits the custom ZK-circuit work.
• Languages in public repos: Go (reference signer, core services), Python (SDK), circuit tooling for the Plonky2-based prover.
• No large marketing or business-development department; growth has come from points, the Robinhood partnership and word of mouth among traders.

Lighter does not publish a team page with headshots. Hiring is announced on lighter.xyz and the founder's X account; see the Lighter DEX Twitter and community guide.

Funding history

The November 2025 round was reported first by Fortune and The Block. Notable about the investor list:

• Founders Fund (Peter Thiel's firm) rarely leads crypto exchange deals.
• Ribbit Capital is the fintech specialist behind Robinhood, Coinbase and Nubank.
• a16z crypto had largely stayed out of perp DEXs before Lighter.
• Robinhood Ventures is the strategic investor that turned into a product partner in July 2026; see the Lighter DEX Robinhood guide.
• Haun Ventures and Dragonfly are crypto-native funds with regulatory depth.

Corporate structure

Lighter is unusual among perp DEXs in being a US Delaware C-Corporation. Most competitors use offshore foundations. The US structure is consistent with the founder's CFTC engagement and Lighter's stated goal of a compliant US product, and it also means Lighter is directly subject to US law even while it blocks US users; see the Lighter DEX UK and US restrictions.

The protocol (rollup contracts on Ethereum) is permissionless; the company operates the sequencer, prover, frontend and mobile app.

Who owns the LIT token?

Ownership of the company and ownership of the token are different questions.

So the team and investors collectively hold 50% of LIT, none of it liquid until late December 2026. Full detail: Lighter DEX token.

Valuation: company vs token

• Company: ~$1.5 billion post-money (Nov 2025).
• LIT market cap: ~$1.1 billion; FDV ~$4.5 billion (late Sept 2026 at ~$4.50).

The token's FDV exceeding the company's last private valuation is common in crypto and reflects that token holders have claims on buybacks and fee flows that equity holders share only indirectly. Revenue context: Lighter DEX volume.

Advisors and partners

• Vlad Tenev (Robinhood CEO): advisor; Robinhood Ventures investor; Robinhood Chain integration partner.
• Circle: revenue-sharing partnership (Feb 2026) on USDC held on the platform.
• Bitwise: issuer of the Lighter Staking ETP on Xetra (Sept 2026).
• Paxos / Global Dollar Network: USDG is the collateral on the Robinhood Chain deployment.

Frequently asked questions

Who is the founder of Lighter DEX? Vladimir Novakovski, former Citadel quant and Lunchclub co-founder, Harvard graduate at 18.

Who is the CEO of Lighter DEX? Vladimir Novakovski.

Who owns Lighter DEX? Lighter, Inc. and Elliot Technologies, Inc., owned by the founder, team and venture investors including Founders Fund, Ribbit, a16z, Robinhood Ventures, Dragonfly, Haun and Lightspeed.

How much has Lighter raised? About $89 million, including $68 million in November 2025 at a ~$1.5 billion valuation.

Is Vlad Tenev involved with Lighter? As an advisor and through Robinhood Ventures and the Robinhood integration. He is not the founder.

Is Lighter a US company? Yes, a Delaware C-Corp, though it blocks US users pending a compliant product.

Related guides

• What is Lighter DEX?
• Lighter DEX Robinhood
• Lighter DEX token
• Lighter DEX security