Series A Funding Heist in GTA Online: All 5 Setups, Payouts and the Elite Challenge

Series A Funding is the fourth of the original GTA Online Heists, Trevor Philips' four-player job to torch every rival drug dealer in Los Santos and Blaine County and steal their stock before flipping it for cash. It takes five setup missions and one warehouse-to-lighthouse finale, and it pays better per hour than most of the other classic Heists once you know the route.

Series A Funding essentials

• Unlocked after completing The Humane Labs Raid, as the fourth heist in the original 2015 Heists strand led by Lester Crest and Trevor Philips
• Entry fee: $25,000, fronted by the heist leader before the crew can start
• 5 setup missions: Coke, Trash Truck, Bikers, Weed and Steal Meth, playable in any order
• 1 finale: defend the TPI warehouse, then escort two drug-laden trucks to the buyer at El Gordo Lighthouse
• Designed for a full 4-player crew, though most setups can be run with 2
• Elite Challenge bonus for finishing fast, clean and violent enough

What is the Series A Funding heist?

Series A Funding is the setup for the entire Heists finale arc: Trevor spends the mission torching four separate drug operations around San Andreas (a cocaine shipment, a weed farm, a meth lab and a Lost MC biker stash) and stealing what's left before the dealers can retaliate. The finale then has the crew defending the stolen product at a warehouse under the freeway before running it out to a buyer at the lighthouse.

Compared with The Fleeca Job or The Humane Labs Raid, Series A Funding leans more on gunfights than stealth, so bring a crew that's comfortable with a firefight, not just a getaway driver.

How to unlock Series A Funding

You need a high-end apartment with a Heist planning room and to have finished The Humane Labs Raid, the third heist in the original 2015 strand. Once both are done, Lester calls to introduce the job, and the heist leader pays a $25,000 entry fee to open the setup board. If you're catching up on the full order these classic jobs unlocked in, see how GTA Online's first Heists rolled out after their infamous 17-month delay.

The 5 setup missions, in order

You can run these in whatever order the game offers, but this is the sequence most crews use because it front-loads the stealthier jobs before the noisy ones.

1. Coke

The crew splits into an air team and a water team. The water team swims or boats out to a yacht anchored offshore to steal the cocaine, while the air team either lays down covering fire from a helicopter or drops a player directly onto the deck. Once the drugs are secured, the crew escapes through the storm drains and tunnels beneath the city to the drop-off. Keep the chopper high enough that the yacht's guards can't tag it with small arms fire.

2. Trash Truck

One player steals a garbage truck while the rest of the crew rides shotgun or follows in support vehicles. The truck stops at four separate locations to collect bags of stashed drugs, and each stop triggers an enemy wave. Whoever is driving should keep the truck moving between pickups rather than idling, since it's the biggest and slowest target on the map.

3. Bikers

A stealth-first setup: the crew clears out a Lost MC trailer park using suppressed weapons, staying undetected for as long as possible before grabbing a van and escaping through the north side of the compound. Going loud early turns this into one of the hardest firefights in the heist, so headshots with a suppressed pistol or SMG are worth the extra few seconds.

4. Weed

Snipers cover the ground team as they clear a marijuana farm, then the crew escorts two vehicles, a Technical and a Benson truck, back to the drop-off point. The two vehicles split up on different routes, so a two-player crew will need to prioritize whichever truck is taking more damage rather than trying to defend both equally.

5. Steal Meth

The crew infiltrates the O'Neil family's farm wearing masks to avoid identification, then has to protect a meth-loaded tanker truck on the drive out while armed escort vehicles chase them down. This is the most vehicle-combat-heavy setup of the five, so a crew member in a well-armed escort car matters more here than in any other Series A Funding mission.

The finale: defending the warehouse and the lighthouse run

The finale opens with every dealer the crew robbed during setups converging on the TPI warehouse under the Los Santos Freeway to take their drugs back. Two players hold the north end of the warehouse and two hold the south, using cover and thrown mines to thin out the waves of attackers before they can reach the trucks.

Once the warehouse is clear, two players climb into armed trucks and escort the drug-laden vans out to a house near El Gordo Lighthouse, where the buyer is waiting. Expect pursuit vehicles on the drive, so keep gunners in the truck beds rather than trying to out-drive the chase.

Series A Funding payouts

Heist payouts get a scheduled first-completion bonus each week, roughly 1.5x the standard rate, on top of the base Heist Challenge payout structure. Rates below are the current baseline; treat the "first weekly" column as the target if your crew only runs it once a week.

Difficulty	Standard payout	First completion of the week
Easy	$353,500	$530,250
Normal	$707,000	$1,060,500
Hard	$883,750	$1,325,625

Payouts are split among the crew and reduced by the leader's cut if the heist leader chose to take one when setting up the job, so agree on the split before you start.

Elite Challenge: how to get the bonus

Series A Funding's Elite Challenge asks for all three of the following in a single finale run:

• Finish the finale in under 6 minutes 30 seconds
• Kill at least 75 enemies across the mission
• No player deaths for the whole run

Hitting all three nets an extra cash bonus on top of the standard Hard-mode payout, so it's worth running the finale a second time solo-clean once your crew knows the enemy spawn points. The kill count is the easiest part to miss if your crew clears the warehouse too efficiently and skips ahead before the later waves spawn, so don't rush the defense phase if you're chasing the Elite bonus.

Tips to run Series A Funding faster

• Run Coke and Bikers first: both reward a clean, quiet approach, and getting through them fast keeps the whole session moving before player fatigue sets in
• Communicate whoever is escorting the Technical or Benson in the Weed setup so the crew doesn't waste time backtracking for one truck while the other gets destroyed
• Stock up on body armor and Explosive Rounds before the finale, since the warehouse defense phase is almost entirely a stationary gunfight
• If you're grinding payouts rather than chasing the Elite Challenge, run on Normal rather than Hard: the time cost of Hard rarely offsets the extra cash per hour once you're not aiming for the bonus

Series A Funding sits between The Humane Labs Raid and the original strand's finale, the Pacific Standard Job, in the classic Heists order. If you're working through every job for the gold medals rather than just the cash, the GTA 5 Heists Gold Medal Guide covers the objective requirements for every mission in the original story-mode Heists too. And if Series A Funding's shootouts feel too slow for your taste, the newer Cayo Perico Heist and Diamond Casino Heist offer faster, more flexible alternatives once you've unlocked them.