ChainCatcher news, French artificial intelligence startup Mistral AI has completed a €600 million (approximately $640 million) Series B funding round, led by General Catalyst, with other investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, a16z, NVIDIA, Samsung Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Belfius, Bertelsmann Investments, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Cisco, Eurazeo, Headline, Hanwha Asset Management Venture Fund, IBM, Korelya Capital, Latitude, Millennium New Horizons, Sanabil Investments, ServiceNow, and SV Angel.It is reported that Mistral AI was founded by former researchers from DeepMind and Meta, competing with OpenAI and Google to develop generative artificial intelligence infrastructure. Last December, Mistral AI announced the completion of a €385 million ($415 million) funding round, led by a16z and Lightspeed Ventures, bringing the company's valuation to $2 billion.

ChainCatcher news, according to VentureBeat, the distributed computing platform Expanso has completed a $7.5 million seed round financing, led by General Catalyst and Hetz Ventures.It is reported that Expanso CEO David Aronchick, who previously worked at Protocol Lab, stated that the new funding will be used to drive the development of their open-source data processing platform "Bacalhau" and to configure additional nodes to increase capacity for handling more data tasks, including distributed training of AI machine learning and processing application logs.

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, cryptocurrency startup Ostium Labs has raised $3.5 million in funding to develop a digital goods perpetual swap protocol, with participation from General Catalyst, LocalGlobe, SIG, and Balaji Srinivasan. It aims to attract traditional commodity traders and cryptocurrency native traders by providing a transparent and flexible alternative for trading assets such as oil, Bitcoin, and forex pairs.

ChainCatcher news, Web3 payment company C14 announced the completion of a $2.5 million seed round financing, led by General Catalyst, with participation from Fin Capital, Cipholio, and Istari Ventures.C14 helps websites and decentralized applications (dApps) embed digital asset purchase functionalities, providing international and localized payment services for emerging markets. Its founder and CEO, Erich Grant, previously worked at Wyre. Currently, C14 is registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the United States, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), and has obtained virtual asset service provider qualifications in Lithuania. (axios)

Chain Catcher news, the encrypted lending service protocol Sovryn announced the completion of a $5.4 million financing round, led by General Catalyst, with participation from Collider Ventures, Bering Waters, Bollinger Investment Group, and Balaji Srinivasan.It is reported that Sovryn's core product is an innovative lending protocol called Zero Protocol, which helps users obtain zero-interest loans using their Bitcoin as collateral, allowing users to decide when to repay. The company will use this new funding to expand its global financial operating system, aiming to provide better personal financial autonomy for people around the world. According to Sovryn core contributor Edan Yago, they do not have a company, foundation, or nonprofit organization behind them, but rather resemble a user-owned, open-source code-based cooperative. (source link)