Vest secures $13 million in seed round financing, led by Portal Ventures.

According to Fortune, retail proprietary trading startup Vest Labs announced it has closed a $13 million seed round, led by Portal Ventures, with Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and several KKR executives participating as individual investors. The company did not disclose its post-money valuation. Vest allows eligible traders to use the firm’s capital to trade perpetual contracts in real markets around the clock, with traders retaining up to 80% of profits and the rest going to the company. The firm noted that unlike some retail proprietary trading firms that rely on fees from simulated trading accounts, this model lets Vest benefit from traders’ success rather than betting on their failure. The funding will be used to develop a mobile app, expand its current 22-person team, and add more assets available for round-the-clock trading. Per Vest’s own disclosure, as of late September, roughly 26% of the platform’s around 27,000 traders had received cash payouts, with month-over-month growth exceeding 300% in both monthly active traders and trading volume.