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According to Techtimes, AI model evaluation company Vals AI completed a $40 million Series A funding round with a valuation of $400 million, led by a16z, with participation from 8VC, Pear VC, Bloomberg Beta, as well as new investors HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures.Vals AI uses an independent system to evaluate cutting-edge models launched by companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI, rather than using traditional public benchmark tests. The new funding will be used to expand evaluation infrastructure and launch testing tools for creating programming benchmarks based on enterprise GitHub code repositories.

According to DIGITIMES, NVIDIA's next-generation AI platform Feynman aims for mass production in the second half of 2028, utilizing TSMC's A16 process and incorporating SoIC 3D stacking and CPO technology. The Rubin generation focuses on integrating multiple small chips with HBM, while Feynman further develops towards 3D small chips, SoIC, and CPO. The report indicates that TSMC is accelerating the construction of related production capacity, with the original plan for SoIC monthly capacity to reach 20,000 pieces by the end of 2026, now updated to a target of 50,000 pieces by the end of 2027.The construction progress of TSMC's Chiayi AP7 and Tainan AP8 is also accelerating, with AP7 planned in 8 phases. P1 and P2 have entered installation, P3 and P4 have obtained construction permits, and P5 to P8 are still in planning. In addition to mass-producing Apple-specific WMCM, the factory will configure SoIC, CoPoS, and CPO production lines according to customer demand. NVIDIA has rapidly shifted its R&D and supply chain resources to the Feynman platform, and the spillover effect of TSMC's advanced packaging orders continues to expand, with Siliconware becoming the main testing and packaging factory for NVIDIA's CoWoS and CPO orders. The NVLink interconnect bandwidth of NVIDIA's Feynman platform is expected to exceed 1 PB/s, further improving from Rubin Ultra's 520 TB/s. TSMC's COUPE technology integrates EIC and PIC in 3D through SoIC to form a light engine, advancing optoelectronic conversion from traditional circuit boards to the internal packaging structure. Since 2026, NVIDIA has invested over $40 billion in building the AI ecosystem, covering areas such as models, wafer manufacturing, data centers, and optical communications.

According to the Financial Times, Erebor Bank, a crypto-friendly bank co-founded by Oculus founder and Anduril founder Palmer Luckey and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, is seeking $1.5 billion in funding, with a pre-money valuation target of $8 billion. This valuation is nearly double the company's valuation of $435 million when it completed a $350 million funding round in December 2025.Currently, Erebor has received support from investment firms such as 8VC and Haun Ventures, and the new funding round is expected to attract participation from institutions like Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Human Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and SV Angel.As investment in AI infrastructure enters a phase of rapid expansion, Erebor is targeting the financing needs of AI companies. AI firms require substantial funds to procure GPUs, build data centers, and secure energy supplies, while traditional financial institutions are gradually exploring financing models for AI infrastructure assets. However, whether Erebor can maintain rapid growth after the cooling of cycles in the AI and crypto industries remains a key focus for the market. This funding round has not yet been finalized and is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

HappyRobot, an enterprise-level AI intelligence company, announced the completion of a $150 million Series C financing round, led jointly by Prysm Capital and Eurazeo, with continued participation from a16z, Base10, and Y Combinator. Other strategic investors include Koch Disruptive Technologies, Orange, and T.Capital, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom.HappyRobot focuses on using AI intelligence to automatically handle complex, multi-step business coordination tasks, reducing the costs of manual coordination. After this round of financing, its total funding amount is approximately $200 million, and the company's valuation has reached $1.2 billion, officially entering the "unicorn" ranks.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, two addresses suspected to belong to a16z (0x5a2...208, 0xf55...1C2) transferred 979,000 HYPE to Hyperliquid and staked them 8 hours ago, worth $53.53 million.

According to on-chain analysts, a wallet suspected to be associated with a16z (0xb5E...c24e) has withdrawn a total of 132,056.65 HYPE from various exchanges in the past 8 hours, worth 7.335 million dollars, with an average withdrawal price of 55.54 dollars.Since July 15, the same address has transferred a total of 398,000 HYPE to exchanges, approximately 24.89 million dollars.

According to South Korean media Asiae, six leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, a16z, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and NEA, announced the signing of a strategic investment cooperation memorandum (MOU) with the National Pension Service (NPS) of Korea, planning to jointly explore investment opportunities, share investment information, and strengthen global venture capital布局.Furthermore, the South Korean government is accelerating the promotion of policies to attract overseas venture capital, coupled with the launch of the "National Growth Fund," which has a scale of 200 trillion won. The market expects that the Korean venture capital sector will see a simultaneous inflow of policy funds, private capital, and overseas capital, with strategic industries such as AI and semiconductors likely to receive more investment. However, industry insiders warn that if a large amount of capital concentrates on a few popular companies, it may inflate company valuations and create bubbles, potentially facing valuation adjustment pressure during future IPOs and mergers and acquisitions, affecting fund returns.

According to Mlm monitoring, a certain HYPE whale staked 2.785 million HYPE through 20 wallets in the past 11 hours, worth approximately 164 million USD.This whale accumulated a total of 2.94 million HYPE from September to October last year, currently valued at about 172 million USD, making it one of the largest holders of HYPE. This whale may be related to a16z, but this has not yet been confirmed.

According to Gelonghui, Atoms, a robotics company founded by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, has completed a $1.7 billion financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with Ben Horowitz joining the board. The equity investors in this round include Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group, and Uber.Horowitz focused the logic of this investment on specialized robots rather than humanoid robots. He pointed out that in heavy industry, specialized robots are much more suitable for completing most tasks than humanoid robots.

According to GlobeNewswire, AI security startup Neo announced the completion of a $100 million financing round, led by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures.It is reported that the company positions itself as an "Agentic Software Control" company, dedicated to building a real-time control layer for enterprises, helping security operations teams (SecOps) manage and protect the rapidly proliferating AI agents, AI applications, browsers, identity systems, and intelligent capabilities in traditional software. The new funds will be used to expand the engineering and marketing teams and accelerate the expansion of enterprise customers.

According to monitoring by Lookonchain, suspected whales related to a16z (0xb5E...c24e, 0xF43...9BC2) sold 421,800 HYPE again in the past 24 hours, worth 25.3 million USD.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, a suspected a16z address retrieved 471,500 HYPE (worth $305,700) from Hyperliquid within the last day, and then transferred it to exchanges such as OKX, Bybit, and Gate.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) announced an investment in AI Agent security startup Runta, which aims to help businesses manage and constrain AI agents like "raising children." The specific investment amount has not been disclosed.Runta founder Guanlan Dai previously worked on the technical team at Cloudflare and was a founding engineer at API connection startup Kong. He stated that AI agents share similarities with growing children: they have the ability to perform tasks autonomously but also require boundaries, supervision, and permission management. Dai believes that just as parents provide home safety protection for children and limit their access to credit cards, businesses also need to restrict the important documents that AI agents can access, the range of operations they are allowed to perform, and the amount of disposable funds available at one time.Runta is developing a set of "AI Agent guardianship" infrastructure to help businesses manage AI agents' permissions, security risks, and behavioral boundaries, preventing autonomous AI systems from causing data leaks, erroneous operations, or financial losses during task execution. As businesses increasingly deploy AI agents with autonomous decision-making capabilities, establishing a trustworthy and secure agent management system is becoming a new infrastructure requirement. Runta aims to become the "parental control layer" of the AI Agent era, providing capabilities such as agent identity management, permission control, risk limitation, and operational supervision for businesses. Industry insiders believe that as AI agents evolve from simple assistants to autonomous entities capable of operating business systems, handling transactions, and executing complex tasks, the infrastructure market surrounding agent security, governance, and compliance may experience rapid growth.

According to Cointelegraph, ARK Invest's research director Lorenzo Valente published a rebuttal to a16z crypto's view that "traditional finance will adopt blockchain rather than DeFi," arguing that institutions will increasingly rely on DeFi infrastructure in the future.Valente stated that public chains are leading private chain projects in actual development, with the growth of tokenized assets on open networks like Ethereum as an example. He also believes that crypto-native companies like Circle and Coinbase are better positioned than traditional financial institutions to build the next generation of financial infrastructure.a16z crypto previously stated that banks and asset management institutions would not directly adopt DeFi but would choose blockchain technologies that comply with existing regulatory, governance, and operational requirements, including features like tokenization and atomic settlement, while continuing to maintain licensing and institutional control.Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez also disagreed with a16z's viewpoint, suggesting that institutions might adopt the underlying infrastructure of DeFi and overlay compliance, custody, and other enterprise-level controls on top of it.

a16z published a blog post stating that as traditional financial institutions accelerate their exploration of blockchain technology, the market generally believes that the future will see a comprehensive integration of DeFi (Decentralized Finance) and TradFi (Traditional Finance), forming a new financial model through the combination of decentralized finance and institutional distribution systems.However, the reality may not be so. The core motivation for traditional financial institutions to adopt blockchain is not to embrace decentralization, but to value its commercial benefits in reducing costs, improving settlement efficiency, expanding distribution channels, and optimizing customer relationship management.What is more likely to emerge in the future is a new type of "programmable financial infrastructure" based on underlying blockchain technology, optimized for institutional needs, rather than a simple integration of traditional finance and DeFi. Institutions are selectively absorbing certain technological capabilities from DeFi and modifying them according to their own regulatory, risk management, and operational requirements.For example, atomic settlement can reduce counterparty risk, shared ledgers can lower back-office reconciliation costs, programmable funds can automatically execute processes such as interest payments, margin management, and corporate actions, and automated market-making models are also being applied to on-chain foreign exchange and tokenized asset pricing.At the same time, the native DeFi features of open access, anonymity, and trustless execution often conflict with institutional requirements for compliance, control, and accountability. Therefore, cases such as JPMorgan's institutional blockchain project, BlackRock's and Franklin Templeton's tokenized funds, are essentially not traditional finance entering DeFi, but rather using blockchain technology to improve existing financial business processes.In the future, the blockchain industry will have two development paths: on one hand, enterprises and financial institutions will continue to promote the implementation of blockchain infrastructure that meets regulatory requirements, expanding the industry scale through applications such as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and on-chain settlements; on the other hand, open networks will continue to play the role of a source of innovation, continuously generating new financial primitives and market mechanisms, providing technical reserves for future institutional infrastructure.TradFi and DeFi are not in competition but are developing together in different directions. Traditional finance may not fully adopt the DeFi model but will gradually adopt parts that suit its own needs. The true integration may ultimately occur at the underlying blockchain network level, rather than one side replacing the other.For developers, the key is not to chase all markets simultaneously but to clarify the target audience: for institutions, products need to be built around compliance, risk control, and long-term business processes; for open networks, there is a need to continue exploring innovation, liquidity, and network effects. The future financial system may operate on blockchain infrastructure, but the most important innovations may still come first from open networks.