financing

According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin has dropped about 40% since Strategy launched the Bitcoin financing tool STRC. STRC has fallen below the $100 par value, sparking discussions in the market about the sustainability of Michael Saylor's Bitcoin "flywheel" model. Strategy currently holds over 846,000 BTC, but the recent buying pace has noticeably slowed. Data shows that the company increased its holdings by 1,550 BTC worth approximately $101 million in the week ending June 8; in the week ending June 15, it added another 1,587 BTC worth about $100 million. In contrast, in April 2026, it bought 34,164 BTC in a single week, amounting to $2.54 billion, indicating a significant decrease in recent capital inflows.Meanwhile, Strategy previously sold 32 BTC to meet dividend obligations. Although this amount is small compared to its overall holdings, the market believes this indicates that when STRC's financing efficiency declines, the company's cash flow pressure may increase. STRC was originally designed as a preferred stock tool trading close to the $100 par value, attracting investors through dividend adjustments and helping Strategy raise funds to purchase Bitcoin. Currently, the STRC price has fallen to a historical low, having once dropped to $82.53, and then closed at $88.59, about 13% below par value. Critics argue that the STRC price falling below par value means that Strategy's financing channels are under pressure.Long-time Bitcoin critic Peter Schiff described STRC as "like a typical centralized Ponzi structure," believing that the model relies on continuous financing or selling Bitcoin to maintain operations. Crypto trader DonAlt also questioned STRC's recent performance, stating that its trading behavior resembles a "Ponzi structure." However, some analysts believe that the decline in STRC is more due to leveraged liquidations rather than a deterioration in Strategy's fundamentals. STRC had previously maintained a price around $99 to $100, attracting investors to use leveraged trading, and the price falling below this critical level triggered forced liquidations, exacerbating the decline.Analyst Scott Melker pointed out that STRC's current yield has actually increased due to the discount. Since dividends are calculated based on a $100 liquidation preference, if the STRC price is $90, the 11.5% annualized dividend corresponds to an actual yield of about 12.8%; if the price drops to $85, the yield could exceed 13%. Strategy is expected to announce the next STRC dividend adjustment on June 30. The market is currently focused on whether STRC's discount will persist and whether Strategy's model of relying on capital markets for financing to continue increasing BTC holdings can remain stable.

Aave founder Stani Kulechov stated that Aave V4 can be used to reconstruct the on-chain securities financing market. He mentioned that securities financing is one of the largest markets on Wall Street but receives relatively little attention from the outside. Securities collateralized loans have become a multi-trillion dollar business, with the U.S. repurchase market having an average daily exposure of about $12.6 trillion, secured financing reaching $1.3 trillion, wealth management securities collateralized loans exceeding $400 billion, and approximately $4.6 trillion in assets in the securities lending market being lent out, generating a record $15 billion in revenue by 2025.Aave V4, through a "liquidity hub + modular market" structure, allows for shared liquidity at the underlying level while setting up segmented markets with different risk parameters, asset ranges, and rules at the upper level. Aave V4 can support three core securities financing scenarios: securities collateralized loans, repurchase transactions, and securities lending. Tokenized securities can be used as collateral to borrow GHO or stablecoins; repurchase transactions can borrow stablecoins using tokenized securities as collateral and achieve atomic settlement; in securities lending, the tokenized securities themselves can become borrowable assets, with lending income flowing directly to asset holders.Stani indicated that Aave V4 could adopt a single shared liquidity hub or split multiple hubs by asset class and risk. The former has deeper liquidity, while the latter offers stronger risk isolation. He believes that the realistic path may start with unified liquidity and, as the types of collateral expand, gradually evolve into a multi-hub structure categorized by asset class and risk.

Renaiss, a liquidity infrastructure for real-world collectibles, announced the completion of a $1.5 million seed round financing, led by YZi Labs, with participation from Gate Ventures, Hash Global, XIN Family, and Redline Labs. Angel investors come from Mask Network, Far East Group, Logoman, Hoopi, and Legit App.Built on the BNB Chain, Renaiss aims to connect third-party vaults, card shops, and custody nodes through Renaiss Vault OS, and uses Renaiss.XYZ as the application layer for users to access the on-chain collectibles market. It provides verifiable custody, standardized settlement, and on-chain liquidity for physical collectibles, eliminating friction in verification, custody, pricing, and cross-border transactions. Collectibles verified through custody can complete ownership transfers on-chain and circulate globally without trust and permission.The funds from this round will be used to expand the vault network, enhance product integration with the Renaiss SDK ecosystem, expand collectible categories, drive global market expansion, and support DeFi integration and AI Agent-related infrastructure development.It is reported that Renaiss has been selected for the third season of the YZi Labs incubation program EASY Residency and has won the 2025 Binance Blockchain Week Dubai Demo Night award, while ranking first in the RWA category on the BNB Chain. Since the Beta launch in November 2025, the Renaiss platform has achieved a turnover of over $20 million, with more than 260,000 users.

DeepSeek has officially launched the web version of its image recognition mode, while the app is still in the internal testing phase. From a functional perspective, the newly launched image recognition mode is still in its initial stage. The reporter used a photo of DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng multiple times to test the model, which, after a few minutes of processing, provided several incorrect answers and ultimately admitted, "I am really not sure. I do not recommend guessing names, as guessing wrong is worse than saying 'I don't know.'"In tests conducted by other netizens, when faced with a photo of founder Liang Wenfeng, DeepSeek even misidentified him as Yang Zhilin, the founder of Moonlight Dark Side, and a "younger version" of Ma Huateng. It is worth noting that just before the launch of the image recognition mode, DeepSeek was reported to have finalized its first round of financing exceeding 50 billion yuan. According to market news, the core investment terms for DeepSeek are: whether for large companies or VC funds, Liang Wenfeng's most important requirement is: do not poach DeepSeek's people or suggest they start their own businesses. The reporter inquired with insiders at DeepSeek about this situation and learned that this statement is basically true.

According to Bloomberg, Israeli artificial intelligence and cybersecurity company Dream has completed a $260 million financing round, with a post-money valuation of approximately $3 billion, nearly tripling from a valuation of about $1 billion in February 2025. This round was led by Bicycle Capital and Group 11, with participation from Bain Capital Ventures, Antler, Tru Arrow Partners, and others.Dream was founded in 2023 by former NSO Group CEO Shalev Hulio and former Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, initially focusing on national-level AI cyber defense. It has now launched a sovereign AI platform and AI security product Hero aimed at governments and state-owned enterprises, achieving nearly $300 million in sales to date, and will accelerate deployment in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and the Americas.

According to BTCTreasuries, Bitcoin treasury company Capital B has disclosed that its shareholders' meeting has approved a large-scale financing plan, allowing for the raising of up to approximately $5.76 billion through the issuance of new shares, and refinancing of up to approximately $115.2 billion through the issuance of credit instruments, aimed at further increasing its Bitcoin holdings.Based on current prices, the potential scale of this financing could theoretically support the purchase of over 1.87 million BTC, demonstrating the company's continued high expansion in its crypto asset allocation strategy. This resolution implies that Capital B may continue to expand its Bitcoin holdings through a dual path of "equity + debt instruments" in the future, further strengthening its asset-liability structure and exposure to the crypto market.

According to the official announcement, Galaxy Ventures has announced the lead investment of $15 million in the Series A funding round for the high-end credit card startup Karta. This funding is part of Karta's total fundraising plan of $140 million, which also includes a $125 million credit line provided by Community Investment Management (CIM).It is reported that Karta is dedicated to providing high-quality credit card products issued in the United States for high-net-worth (HNW) individuals globally. The platform combines stablecoin infrastructure with artificial intelligence technology, breaking the reliance on traditional FICO scores. By collaborating with over 80 large private banks and brokerages worldwide (such as Raymond James, Itau, etc.), it offers unsecured credit underwriting based on users' verified assets at these institutions. Additionally, the credit card provides zero foreign exchange fees and a 24/7 AI-native concierge service based on WhatsApp.Data shows that Karta's revenue and payment transaction volume achieved over tenfold growth in 2025 and continued to record a fourfold quarter-on-quarter growth in the first quarter of 2026.

Receipts Depositary Corporation (RDC) has completed a new round of financing of $7 million, led by LiveOak Ventures, with participation from Hivemind Capital, Onigiri Capital, OTC Markets Group, GTS, and Redbeard Ventures. The new funds are intended to accelerate the development of digital asset depositary receipt products and provide compliant securitized products and infrastructure services covering multiple asset classes for U.S. investors.

On-chain digital advertising startup EarnOS announced the completion of a $6 million Pre-A round of financing, led by 1kx, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Circle Ventures, and Social Graph Ventures. In addition, EarnOS also received a four-year, $12.5 million non-dilutive strategic investment from Verona (formerly XION) to support application validation, user access, and reward distribution systems. The company also announced a rebranding and stated that its L1 network will provide underlying support for EarnOS, aimed at large-scale user authentication and task incentive mechanisms.

J.P. Morgan strategist Tarek Hamid and his team have raised their forecast for total investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure by 2030 to $5.5 trillion in a recent research report, an increase of $400 billion from their prediction last November. The bank noted that in this investment race for super-scale data centers, approximately $4.1 trillion will come from debt financing, with loans covering an average of 85% of total project costs, indicating that AI capital expenditures have shifted to a debt market-centric financing model.Since last November, global bond issuance related to AI and data centers has exceeded $300 billion. The latest typical case comes from chip giant NVIDIA, which completed the pricing of a $25 billion investment-grade bond issuance this Monday, marking its return to the bond market for the first time in five years. This issuance was conducted in seven tranches (with maturities ranging from 2 to 30 years) and attracted oversubscription of up to $85 billion, ultimately increasing the issuance size by 25% from the initial target.The research report emphasizes that although tech giants like NVIDIA, Alphabet, and Amazon are generating substantial cash flow from the AI boom (with NVIDIA estimating free cash flow exceeding $200 billion this fiscal year), these giants still choose to issue hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds. This indicates that such bond issuance is not due to a "lack of financing," but rather that the credit market is confirming the pricing of AI assets.

According to The Information, DeepSeek has completed a record financing of over $7 billion, valuing the company at over $50 billion in this round of financing.In terms of funding sources, founder Liang Wenfeng personally invested 20 billion yuan, Tencent invested 10 billion yuan, CATL invested 5 billion yuan, and JD.com, NetEase, and IDG Capital each invested 3 billion yuan. The only exception is the National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund of China, which directly invested 1 billion yuan in DeepSeek, not only holding voting rights but also not subject to a 5-year lock-up period. Aside from the national-level fund, external investors have no voting rights and can only access specific financial information and enjoy priority investment rights in subsequent financing.The new round of financing marks a significant shift in DeepSeek's operating model. Since its establishment in 2023, DeepSeek, as the AI team under Huansquare Quantitative, has relied on its own funds for operation and has maintained research independence due to a lack of commercialization pressure. However, under pressure from funding and talent retention, Liang Wenfeng and the team initiated financing in April and conducted strict due diligence on the limited partners behind the investors to prevent equity from falling into the hands of unknown investors.

Green energy infrastructure startup TAR announced the completion of a $27 million seed round financing to develop modular "plug-and-play" power systems for data centers, aimed at addressing the power and deployment bottlenecks faced by data centers in the AI era.According to reports, the solution combines solar energy, wind energy, battery storage, and natural gas backup units to achieve nearly round-the-clock (24/7) local power supply capability, reducing reliance on the public grid and thus bypassing issues such as grid access queuing, approval delays, and power price fluctuations. TAR's co-founder stated that the core idea is to significantly compress the deployment cycle of energy systems through factory prefabrication, pre-assembly, and pre-testing, enabling data centers to achieve "rapid go-live" capability.In pilot projects, the system can provide approximately 10 MW of stable power supply and plans to deploy over 200 MW of normal load capacity by 2027. The company noted that its first customer is an undisclosed "neocloud" service provider, aiming to provide a faster energy deployment path for AI computing infrastructure.In terms of the economic model, TAR stated that its solution does not aim for costs below those of traditional grids but prioritizes solving the "speed issue." Its off-grid energy system can be deployed in about three months, avoiding the time costs associated with grid access and land restrictions. As the demand for AI computing continues to grow, power supply has been identified by multiple studies as one of the main bottlenecks for data center expansion. Industry analysis suggests that the "off-grid energy + modular data center" model is becoming a new direction in the competition for AI infrastructure.

According to a report by The Information, Broadcom announced its support for the Anthropic computing power project participated by Apollo and Blackstone.On the surface, this deal appears to be a financing arrangement for AI computing infrastructure, but industry insiders believe that its core lies in indirectly driving the long-term demand growth for Broadcom's custom AI chips by promoting large-scale AI computing deployments.

According to The Block, the Latin American cross-border payment app El Dorado has completed a $9 million Series A funding round, led by Paradigm, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Verda Ventures.El Dorado focuses on addressing the issues of low efficiency and high costs in cross-border payments in Latin America, covering 12 countries including Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. It currently has over 100,000 active users and has processed more than 5 million transactions.The company stated that its business has expanded to enterprise-level payment services, supporting cross-border trade and corporate cash flow, and has integrated stablecoin and fiat settlement systems into a unified payment architecture.After this funding round, El Dorado further launched an enterprise payment product based on the Tempo Layer 1 blockchain. This network was co-incubated by Paradigm and Stripe, aiming to provide global enterprises with cross-border settlement capabilities without the need for local entities.Analysts believe that as stablecoins and on-chain payment infrastructure accelerate their implementation in emerging markets, Latin American cross-border payments are becoming one of the important testing grounds for the integration of crypto finance and traditional payment systems.

According to PR Newswire, the digital payment platform Interchecks announced the completion of a $50 million Series C financing round, led by Bettor Capital, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Decades Holdings, and Thayer Street Partners.The company primarily serves account transfers, digital banking (neobank), brokerage platforms, and cryptocurrency wallet deposit scenarios, allowing businesses to make real-time deposits to compliant accounts using debit card vouchers, and achieving fast and secure fund flows through an integrated risk control system. It currently maintains partnerships with global payment networks such as Visa and Mastercard.

According to The Information, data center software startup and AI server broker Hydra Host has completed a new round of financing of $100 million, with a valuation of approximately $800 million. This round was led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from NVIDIA, ARK Invest under Cathie Wood, early CoreWeave investor Magnetar, and existing shareholders Founders Fund and Flume Ventures.Hydra Host was founded in 2021, initially serving cryptocurrency miners, and has now transformed into a data center operator providing automation software, as well as undertaking AI server trading matchmaking business. NVIDIA's direct involvement further highlights its strategic intent to build an ecological landscape in the AI computing power market.

According to Bloomberg, citing informed sources, the operating entity of Xiaohongshu, Xiaohongshu Technology Co., Ltd., is preparing to secretly submit its initial public offering application in Hong Kong by the end of June. The report states that the company is advancing potential listing matters with advisors, and this transaction is expected to rank among the large IPOs in Hong Kong in recent years. However, details such as the listing time, fundraising scale, and valuation have not yet been finalized, and discussions are still ongoing.Xiaohongshu was founded in Shanghai in 2013, with investors including Tencent, Alibaba, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Capital, and GGV Capital. In the 2024 financing round, Xiaohongshu's valuation was approximately $17 billion. With business growth, Xiaohongshu's valuation soared to $31 billion in secondary market trading in September 2025, and it predicted to shareholders that the full-year profit for 2025 would reach approximately $3 billion.

According to market news, the French company Mistral AI is in talks for financing, with a valuation of approximately 20 billion euros.