financing

The Dubai cryptocurrency trading platform Quote Trade announced the completion of a $4 million financing round, which will be used to expand support for more blockchain and digital assets, strengthen liquidity partnerships, recruit engineering and trading teams, and continue building infrastructure for human traders and AI trading agents.

According to Fortune, the AI dining platform Wonder announced the completion of a $650 million financing round, with participation from Accel, Google Ventures (GV), and NEA, as well as new investors including ARK Invest, AllianceBernstein, and Kayne Anderson. Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and JPMorgan acted as the arrangers for the financing.The company is developing an AI platform called "MEL," which automatically plans and orders meals that meet individual needs by analyzing users' biometric indicators and physical conditions.It is reported that Wonder's post-financing valuation has reached $9 billion, and it plans to launch an initial public offering (IPO) early next year.

According to CNBC, AI infrastructure startup Fireworks AI announced the completion of a $1.5 billion financing round, with the company's valuation reaching $17.5 billion. The company had previously received support from NVIDIA and primarily provides cloud-based services for open-source AI model deployment, helping businesses deploy artificial intelligence applications at a lower cost.This round of financing was led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV, with participation from institutions such as NVIDIA, Evantic, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Currently, Fireworks processes approximately 400 trillion AI tokens daily. The company's clients include businesses such as Elastic, GitLab, and MongoDB. Previously, more than half of its revenue came from the AI programming tool Cursor, but the client base has now become more diversified.

According to a report by businesswire, AI and tokenized financial infrastructure Alpaca announced the completion of a new round of financing totaling $135 million, led by Peak XV, with follow-on investments from Elefund, BNP Paribas's venture capital arm Opera Tech Ventures, and Unbound among others. To date, its total financing has reached $435 million.The new funds will be used to accelerate the construction of its AI-native brokerage infrastructure and API-first prime brokerage business, helping fintech companies, banks, brokerages, wealth management institutions, and crypto financial platforms to build investment products in both traditional and on-chain markets, and to connect with more global crypto exchanges, asset tokenization platforms, and financial institutions.

According to the Financial Times, informed sources reveal that the Chinese AI unicorn company Moonshot AI plans to release a new large language model, Kimi K3, in the near future. This model has between 20 trillion to 30 trillion parameters, making it the largest AI model in China by parameter scale, and its performance is expected to surpass the flagship model Claude Opus 4.8 from Anthropic in mainstream benchmark tests (industry speculation suggests its parameter count is around 15 trillion to 20 trillion).Unlike the currently mainstream closed-source and expensive cutting-edge large models in the United States, Kimi K3 will be available as an open-weight model for users to download and modify for free, which may create competitive pressure for leading American labs like OpenAI and Anthropic. Currently, due to the rising service fees for large models in the U.S. (for example, Anthropic has announced a 50% price increase for Opus 4.8 in September), some overseas companies have begun to shift towards using more cost-effective Chinese open-source models.In terms of the capital market, informed sources indicate that Moonshot AI is preparing for a new round of financing, with the latest valuation expected to reach approximately $31.5 billion. Meanwhile, the valuations of other AI giants in China and the U.S. are also rising; DeepSeek is starting a new round of financing with an estimated valuation of about $71 billion, while Anthropic and OpenAI have reached valuations of $965 billion and $852 billion, respectively, in their latest round of financing. In response to the aforementioned release and financing rumors, Moonshot AI has currently declined to comment.

According to Tiger Research and RootData based on research of 9,416 investment transaction data from the first half of 2018 to 2026, the capital inflow in the cryptocurrency market reached $13.3 billion in the first half of 2026, which is basically on par with the total of $13.2 billion for the entire year of 2024. However, the number of financing rounds was only 435, a decrease of 78% from the peak of 1,978 rounds in 2022, indicating that market funds are accelerating towards a few large transactions.The report points out that the current cryptocurrency investment market is dominated by a few large crypto-native VCs focused on leading investments, as well as venture capital departments of exchanges with liquidity and marketing support, while medium-sized institutions are being rapidly squeezed out. In terms of financing structure, the number of seed round transactions decreased by 88% from 2022 to 81, while financing in Series A and later stages accounted for 75.2% of total investments, with Series A financing amounting to $745.8 million, exceeding the total amount of all seed round financing of $423.3 million during the same period.In terms of sectors, payments and stablecoins, centralized exchanges, and prediction markets have become the most concentrated areas of capital. The payments and stablecoins sector attracted $2.85 billion in funding in the first half of 2026, but about 84% of this was driven by mergers and acquisitions such as Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK and Payward's acquisition of Reap; the investment share in the CEX sector rose to 18.2%, while prediction markets rose to 17.5%. In contrast, the number of financing rounds in the gaming sector plummeted from 141 rounds in 2024 to only 5 rounds, a decrease of 96%. Additionally, traditional financial institutions participated in 54.5% of all investment transactions in the first half of 2026.It is reported that Tiger Research is an independent research institution established in 2022, covering the Asian digital asset market, with business operations in South Korea, Japan, China, and Indonesia, publishing institutional-level research content in five languages, with over 100,000 monthly readers and more than 200 institutional clients.

According to Bloomberg, the humanoid robot startup Walden Robotics, spun off from Toyota's robotics research lab, has completed approximately $300 million in seed funding, with a valuation of $1.1 billion. This round was co-led by Deviation Capital and Toyota Motor Corporation, with participation from Toyota's strategic investment and early-stage venture capital division, as well as Nvidia, Boeing, AE Ventures, Samsung Ventures, and CoreWeave Ventures.Walden is headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, producing self-developed hardware, software, and AI models, focusing on deploying general-purpose robots in manufacturing and logistics facilities to handle tasks considered burdensome by workers. Co-founder Russ Tedrake revealed that they have begun selling humanoid robots to clients across multiple industries, including a pilot project at a North American Toyota plant, where the robots perform repetitive tasks such as loading and unloading automotive parts and cleaning equipment. Tedrake previously served as an executive at the Toyota Research Institute and teaches robotics courses at MIT.

According to Bloomberg, Tether invested $20 million in the Argentine digital bank Ualá as part of Ualá's announced $197 million financing round in March. Ualá plans to use this funding to accelerate its expansion in Argentina, Mexico, and Colombia.Ualá founder and CEO Pierpaolo Barbieri stated that due to the regulatory environment in Argentina and Mexico, USDT stablecoin will not be integrated into the platform in the short term, and Tether is only participating as a financial investor. Ualá has 11 million customers, and after this financing round, it is valued at $3.2 billion, planning to accelerate expansion in Mexico.

Cryptocurrency clearing startup Glacis Labs has completed a $6.8 million seed round financing. This round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from Franklin Templeton, Coinbase Ventures, A.GAIN (formerly IDC Ventures), Protein Capital, and Techni Ventures, using an equity + token warrant structure.The financing will primarily be used to expand its core product, the ZeroDelta platform, and support the expansion of engineering, compliance, and market teams. ZeroDelta is a multi-chain clearing platform that enables matching, net settlement, and final settlement of cross-blockchain digital assets, currently focusing on stablecoins, and has processed over $1 billion in transaction volume to date.

ORANGE JUICE announced the completion of a $40 million financing round, with Mexican billionaire Ricardo Salinas participating as an anchor investor.The project was founded by Ego Death Capital partners Jeff Booth, Lyn Alden, and others, primarily focusing on acquiring profitable U.S. businesses with annual cash flows between $1 million and $10 million, holding them long-term and improving operations, while also building Bitcoin reserves and planning to establish an internal AI operations team to enhance the productivity of the invested companies.

Miami-based payment infrastructure startup Cyclops announced the completion of a $20 million Series A funding round, led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle, Lasagna Ventures, and GPT Ventures.

ADI Chain announced the completion of a $50 million financing round, with participation from IHC.The main business of this project is stablecoin settlement and financial infrastructure development, with ecological cooperation covering compliant stablecoins, tokenized securities, institutional payments, Chainlink, ZKsync, and mainstream cryptocurrency wallets.

DeepSeek's first round of financing has officially landed. Business registration information shows that DeepSeek's affiliated company, Hangzhou DeepSeek Artificial Intelligence Basic Technology Research Co., Ltd., recently underwent a business change, adding Hangzhou Chengli Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership (Limited Partnership) and National Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) as shareholders, with registered capital increased to 16.4475 million yuan.

According to RootData, the total financing amount in the cryptocurrency industry in the first half of the year was $9.081 billion, with a total of 259 financing events; among them, the primary market financing amount (excluding IPO/Post IPO/M&A rounds) was $8.658 billion, a decrease of 26.1% compared to the same period last year, and the number of financing events decreased by 28.5% year-on-year.March and May were the two peaks for financing amounts in the first half of the year, with the number of financing events reaching 66 and 68 respectively; in June, the number of financing events fell back to 43, indicating that after entering the end of the second quarter, market funding activity has cooled down. Overall, large financing still significantly boosts monthly financing scale, but the enthusiasm for regular financing rounds has begun to shrink.In the first half of 2026, there were a total of 75 M&A transactions in the cryptocurrency industry, of which 16 disclosed specific amounts (totaling approximately $3.836 billion). M&A activities were mainly concentrated in the CeFi, tools and information services, DeFi, and infrastructure sectors. Representative M&A events include: Mastercard acquiring BVNK ($1.8 billion), Kraken acquiring Reap ($600 million), etc.Leading cryptocurrency venture capital firms still maintain a high frequency of investments, with Coinbase Ventures participating in 25 investments in the first half of 2026, ranking first; Animoca Brands participated in 20, while a16z and Tether participated in 14 each. In the past 12 months, Coinbase Ventures participated in a total of 68 investments, continuing to lead the industry, followed by Animoca Brands, Pantera Capital, YZi Labs, a16z, Tether, and GSR.From the perspective of sectors, DeFi, infrastructure, and CeFi were the three most active directions for financing in the first half of 2026. In the first half of the year, DeFi completed 129 financing events, infrastructure completed 116, and CeFi completed 69. AI, payments, prediction markets, and RWA were also key sub-sectors of capital focus, with AI-related financing at 59 events, payment-related projects at 46 events, and RWA-related projects at 28 events.Overall, the primary market for cryptocurrency in the first half of 2026 has not completely stagnated, but the market structure has changed: the total financing amount is still supported by a few large transactions, institutional investments are more concentrated, sector preferences are more pragmatic, and M&A has become an important means of industry consolidation. Funds are shifting towards structural allocations around infrastructure, DeFi, CeFi, payments, AI, and RWA.

According to a report by The Information, DeepSeek is seeking a new round of financing, targeting an amount of $7.4 billion, with a company valuation of $74 billion. DeepSeek's recent annual revenue reached $400 million to $500 million, mainly from enterprises and developers calling the model through the API, with a gross margin of over 50% for the V4 API.

According to PR Newswire, AI compliance infrastructure company Hadrius announced the completion of a $27 million seed and Series A financing round, led by CRV, with participation from Y Combinator, Pathlight Ventures, as well as founders from Altruist, Jump AI, and FINNY.The new funds will be used to build AI-native compliance infrastructure for the financial services industry, integrating decentralized compliance reviews, risk monitoring, and regulatory document management into a single intelligent workflow through Agentic AI technology.

According to Bloomberg, Brinc, an AI drone company supported by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, announced the completion of a $125 million financing round, led by existing investor Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and previous investors such as Dylan Field.It is reported that the company focuses on applying AI-based drone technology in the field of public safety, including replacing some high-risk manual response tasks.

According to official news, Tether announced it will lead a $7 million Series A financing for Pact Labs, with Blockchange Ventures and Lasagna participating in the follow-on investment. The funds will be used to support Pact Labs in building infrastructure related to USA₮ and expanding its applications in payroll, earned wage access, credit, and daily payments.Pact Labs primarily provides digital wallet embedding, real-time payroll transfers, and financial service capabilities for enterprise platforms, aiming to improve the low processing efficiency and long settlement periods of the traditional U.S. payroll system. Tether stated that this collaboration aims to promote deeper integration of the digital dollar USA₮ designed for U.S. compliance standards into the daily financial systems of local workers and businesses.

According to official news, Galaxy announced the launch of the institutional-level on-chain financing program GOFR (Galaxy On-Chain Financing Rate), allowing institutional clients to indirectly access the on-chain credit market through Galaxy, obtaining financing at a single optimized rate, with Galaxy acting as the counterparty.