Pharos and GCL Sign Cross-Investment Deal with Maximum Valuation of $10 Billion, Funds Follow Token Performance

Public Companies Invest Real Money in RWA Infrastructure

Pharos is a Layer 1 blockchain dedicated to tokenizing real-world assets. By mid-March 2026, it announced a cross-investment with GCL New Energy, a Hong Kong-listed renewable energy company. According to Hong Kong Stock Exchange disclosures, Pharos is valued at nearly $1 billion—such transparency is quite rare in Web3 funding.

Unlike typical VC rounds, the funds are not received all at once but are tied to the market performance after token listing.

The two parties announced their cooperation as early as January 8, 2026, focusing on: bringing renewable energy assets on-chain, building decentralized energy trading systems, and tracking carbon footprints. Pharos launched the AtlanticOcean testnet in November 2024, positioning itself as “infrastructure to bring real value on-chain.” Currently, regulatory interest in RWA platforms is rising, and Pharos’s architecture is designed for high-throughput financial scenarios.

According to HKEX documents: Pharos subscribed to about 183.5 million GCL new shares (diluted approximately 10.56%), GCL received economic rights through a SAFE agreement, and there are warrants for about 26 million Pharos tokens (roughly 2.6% of supply).

But there are strict thresholds for fund access:

• During the first three months after token listing, Pharos’s average FDV must not be below $760 million, with quarterly reviews afterward.
• If it falls below this threshold, subsequent staged funding will stop.

Based on a $950 million valuation estimate, the effective investment is about $24.73 million, assuming a TVL of around $250 million and a valuation multiple of 4.75x. Previously, Pharos completed an $8 million seed round in November 2024, with investors including Hack VC, Faction VC, and others. The investor lineup now includes both crypto-native VCs and traditional institutions, totaling 13.

This Performance-Based Deal Could Be Imitated

Since GCL is a listed company, its disclosure terms are more detailed than typical Web3 deals. The documents show that valuation comparisons with other Layer 1s included a liquidity discount of over 40%. Pharos was founded in November 2024, registered in the British Virgin Islands, with an 18-person team emphasizing consensus, execution, and parallelized storage. The goal of this partnership is to scale energy tokenization from pilot to operational business.

What the collaboration will do:

• Promote bringing renewable energy assets on-chain and cross-border settlement.
• Connect with Pharos’s $10 million Builder Fund to support RWA, payments, DeFi, and infrastructure projects.
• If FDV thresholds are met, institutional capital can continue to increase—effectively a market vote on energy tokenization.
• Join the RealFi Alliance (members include Anchorage, Alchemy, Dune, AquaFluxPro).

Pharos CEO Wish Wu states that this deal signals the integration of blockchain with the physical industry. Once regulatory approval is complete, it will serve as a reference for Web3 projects—especially in the energy sector—to access traditional capital markets.

The testnet is still running, focusing on high throughput and EVM compatibility. But performance-linked funding means execution risk is real. Pharos’s strategy of first gaining TradFi support, then endorsement from a listed company, could accelerate bridging “traditional finance and on-chain systems.”

In summary: institutional interest in RWA public chains remains, with cross-sector collaborations in energy especially hot.

How to view this deal: It’s still early-stage; key factors are whether the token issuance and three-month FDV can stay above $760 million. Who benefits? Builders and teams working on energy B2B solutions—those who can access funding and scenarios; mid- to long-term funds/funds are second, based on performance thresholds; for short-term trading, wait until tokens are listed and liquidity is verified.