financing

Insiders reveal that the artificial intelligence cloud company Nscale plans to seek up to $3 billion in financing in its IPO in the United States.

On August 21, AI infrastructure investment is becoming a new variable in the U.S. bond market. Tech giants are expanding data centers, chip and computing power construction, and the demand for AI-related financing is rising, starting to compete with the U.S. government for funds from core buyers such as insurance companies, pensions, and long-term asset management institutions. As of August, the issuance scale of U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds has reached approximately $1.7 trillion, setting a historical high for the same period. According to Goldman Sachs, the four major U.S. tech companies have issued more than $170 billion in bonds this year, surpassing the total for the entire year of 2025. Broadcom is seeking to provide chip and infrastructure financing for AI companies like Anthropic, with potential debt size approaching $100 billion.Institutions point out that AI is driving an overall expansion of duration supply in the bond market. With the government and tech companies simultaneously increasing long-term financing demands and a limited long-term funding pool, the market may require higher yields. St. Louis Fed President Bullard stated that a capital competition is forming between the U.S. government's financing needs and AI infrastructure construction. Recently, the yield on 30-year U.S. Treasuries rose to 5.34%, a new high since 2007, while the 10-year yield rose to 4.7%. High interest rates may raise corporate financing costs and affect AI company valuations through discount rates.At the same time, there are signs of weakness in U.S. consumer data, with Walmart's stock price dropping about 9% in a single day, marking the largest decline since 2022. With economic growth slowing and inflation pressures persisting, the Federal Reserve's policy faces a dilemma. The U.S. Treasury has raised the single repurchase limit for 10-20 year and 20-30 year U.S. Treasuries from $2 billion to at least $4 billion. If long-end yields continue to rise, the market may revisit tools such as yield curve control or quantitative easing.

AI+ Prediction Market Project Fortune Protocol officially discloses the latest financing information. The project has previously completed multiple rounds of financing, including Seed and Pre-A rounds, with a total financing amount exceeding 4 million USD.It is reported that participating institutions include K24 Ventures, CGV FoF, MH Ventures, Mapleblock Capital, and others. Fortune Protocol states that this round of funding will primarily be used to promote the technological upgrades of Fortune AI Agent, the integration and expansion of prediction market liquidity, and ecological construction.With the TGE approaching, Fortune Protocol is committed to building intelligent infrastructure for the next generation of prediction markets, promoting the industry towards a more intelligent, efficient, and open direction.

According to Forbes, Anthropic, Blackstone, and Goldman Sachs have jointly established an AI-native enterprise service company called "Ode," with an investment of $1.5 billion.Ode is positioned as an AI implementation consulting firm, with core services including identifying business processes suitable for AI transformation, deploying AI engineers, developing customized applications and agents, automating task processes, and assisting companies with regulatory compliance issues. The company will focus on helping client enterprises implement the Claude model under Anthropic.

Market news indicates that Broadcom (AVGO.O) is seeking to raise over $60 billion in the latest artificial intelligence debt transaction.

According to Decrypt, the privacy blockchain project Beldex announced the completion of an $8 million financing round, led by Sigma Capital, with participation from institutions such as NTC, Nxgen, Digital Consensus Fund, and EAK Ventures. The new funds will be used for developer tools, privacy applications, protocol security, AI infrastructure development, and ecosystem expansion.Beldex is exploring the use of its privacy technology to protect the identity, payments, communication, and data processing of AI entities, including privacy-preserving AI identities, encrypted AI communication, confidential payments, secure AI execution, as well as research on technologies such as fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and secure memory.

According to Bloomberg, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) stated that it will consider participating in the new round of financing for the prediction market platform Polymarket. ICE is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and has previously invested over $1.6 billion in Polymarket.ICE CEO Jeff Sprecher, in an interview with Bloomberg Television, stated that if the company’s participation could help complete Polymarket's current round of financing, it would remain open to that possibility, adding that its investment endorsement could provide support for the financing.Analysts believe that ICE's previous large-scale investment in Polymarket is seen as an important attempt by traditional exchanges to lay out new market infrastructure. If it continues to participate in the financing, it may further strengthen the connection between prediction markets and the mainstream financial system.

The Frontier Data Research Laboratory idler announced the completion of a $9 million seed round financing, led by Alpo and Frankie from Paradigm, with participation from Y Combinator, Long Journey VC, as well as angel investors including marrc, catheryn_li, dcposch, Janine Leger, Lynett Capital, feross, and nur_daulet_.idler is positioned as a frontier data research laboratory, and this round of funding will be used to build evaluation systems, benchmark testing, and reinforcement learning environments for leading frontier laboratories worldwide to train and measure their model performance.

According to RootData, among 3,244 cryptocurrency projects with financing records spanning no more than four years and amounts that can be accounted for, 1,617 have a cumulative financing amount of no more than $5 million, accounting for 49.8%. The median financing for this batch of projects is $2.5 million, with about 96% recording only one round of financing.In terms of sectors, DeFi, infrastructure, and gaming projects together account for 59.2%, with small-scale financing mainly flowing to protocol development, underlying technology, and consumer applications. However, a quarter of the projects in the sample have already ceased operations, indicating that while lower regulatory thresholds can improve financing efficiency, they cannot replace product demand and sustainable operational capability.Institutional participation is also higher than the market's usual perception of "small projects": 92.9% of the sample has identifiable investor records, and 83.5% disclosed at least two investors. Among them, Animoca Brands, Shima Capital, and Big Brain Holdings participated in 84, 69, and 67 projects, respectively.It is reported that the U.S. SEC officially proposed the "Regulation Crypto Assets" on August 18. The proposal aims to set up two tiers of issuance exemptions: projects can raise no more than $5 million in a single instance within four years; projects with greater financing needs can raise up to $75 million within each 12-month period, but must submit financial statements and fulfill ongoing reporting obligations. The proposal is currently in a 60-day public comment period and has not yet officially taken effect.

According to Bloomberg, the multi-chip AI computing scheduling platform Callosum announced the completion of a $100 million financing round, led by Atomico, which had previously invested in the company along with Plural, DCVC, and the UK Sovereign AI Fund.The new funds will support the construction of a "smart scheduling layer" that connects AI applications with underlying computing power. By breaking down different tasks within AI workloads and automatically matching each task to the most suitable model and chip, businesses can reduce costs and improve performance without dealing with underlying complexities.

AI economic infrastructure NeoSoul announced the completion of a $11 million Pre-A round of financing, with participation from MH Ventures, Amber Group, ArkStream Capital, OG Foundation, Kirin Capital, CatcherVC, and New Oak International.NeoSoul stated that it will further develop NeoTrade to strengthen trading infrastructure and build underlying facilities for AI entities to participate in economic activities on a large scale.

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, recently, the embodied intelligence company Zhongke Fifth Epoch has successfully completed Series A1 and A2 financing, with a total financing amount exceeding 1 billion yuan.The A1 round was jointly invested by Xigao Investment, Bank of China’s Zhongyin AIC Fund, and Sanfeng Investment; the A2 round was jointly invested by Xinneng Venture Capital, Zhongyin AIC Fund, Zhongshan Venture Capital, Hongruida Investment, Boyan Technology, and Jinchuang Investment (Zhejiang Province New Energy Vehicle Sub-fund).

According to reports from the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, humanoid intelligence company Current Robotics has publicly disclosed its financing progress for the first time: the company has completed seed round, angel round, and Pre-A round financing, with a total financing amount of hundreds of millions of RMB. The company's investors include financial investment institutions such as BV Baidu Ventures, Hillhouse Capital, Oasis Capital, Monolith Capital, Qianhai Ark, Fosun Wealth, Junshan Capital, as well as industry players like Zhiyuan Robotics, Xinghai Map, and Jike Technology.The financing funds will mainly be used to promote the large-scale collection of human body data, with a focus on investing in the research and development of core technologies such as full-body dexterous operation models and interactive world models.

Institutional-level on-chain financial infrastructure developer Blueprint Finance announced the completion of strategic financing, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Bullish, Keyrock, BitGo, FalconX, G-20, Flowdesk, JPEG Trading, Sentient Capital, Andes, and 2Square. Blueprint Finance is the core developer of Concrete, a full-stack treasury infrastructure aimed at institutions, protocols, and asset managers, used to launch, manage, and allocate capital through complex on-chain strategy configurations, integrating execution, accounting, risk control, rebalancing, and protocols into a unified treasury system.This round of financing will support its continued expansion of Concrete and promote collaboration with protocols, asset issuers, networks, and institutional allocators to build a treasury that supports on-chain yield products and acts as core liquidity infrastructure. In addition to treasury infrastructure, Blueprint Finance is also expanding the Concrete ecosystem, launching on-chain financial primitives such as AssetCX and concUSD.Blueprint Finance CEO and co-founder Nic Roberts-Huntley stated that DeFi is moving beyond merely chasing the highest advertised yields; the next phase concerns infrastructure, providing professional allocators with control, transparency, automation, and risk management while retaining on-chain market advantages.

According to Bloomberg, the startup Fractile, which develops chips specifically for artificial intelligence, is in deep discussions for a new round of financing, with a pre-money valuation of approximately $6.5 billion and expected fundraising of about $600 million. This valuation is more than six times higher than the valuation it received during its financing in May 2026, with some of this round's funds entering at a lower valuation.Fractile focuses on customizing chips for artificial intelligence scenarios and has reached a chip supply agreement with AI company Anthropic. Insiders disclosed the above financing arrangements to Bloomberg, and the related transactions are still in progress.

Base officially announced that its accelerator program Base Batches 004 is now open for applications, targeting the Fall 2026 batch, with a deadline of September 9. The program is jointly operated by Base and the Base Ecosystem Fund, aiming to help early teams building on Base to launch, fundraise, and achieve growth. Selected teams will receive a $100,000 investment offer from the Base Ecosystem Fund (subject to due diligence) and participate in an 8-week hands-on support program to refine their product and narrative, culminating in a Demo Day in November in New York to present to selected investors.Applicant teams must meet the following criteria: be in the early stage (from having a founder-market fit product to post-MVP), be in the pre-seed stage without completing a formal seed round, prefer Base as their primary network, and focus on driving on-chain economic development, covering areas such as transactions, payments, smart contracts, or financing. Selected teams will also receive exclusive advisor guidance, weekly support, cross-domain expert resources, content exposure, and opportunities to showcase to investors. Base stated that applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis and encourages early submission, with the application address being base.org/batches.

OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Frier stated that OpenAI plans to become a publicly traded company by 2027, but may go public earlier if business growth accelerates. Frier mentioned that the IPO is a milestone and a means of financing. In March of this year, the company completed a $122 billion financing round, providing greater flexibility for future development.