financing

According to TechCrunch, the privacy-focused artificial intelligence platform Venice AI has completed a $65 million Series A funding round, achieving a valuation of $1 billion and becoming a unicorn. This round of financing was led by the crypto venture capital firm Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, North Island Ventures, and others.Venice AI stated that the platform provides access to over 200 artificial intelligence models and emphasizes user data privacy protection along with a "low censorship" experience. The company claims to currently have over 3 million active users, an annual revenue exceeding $70 million, and has achieved profitability.The company plans to use the new funds to purchase graphics processing units and build its own data centers to reduce reliance on leased computing power and improve gross margins.

According to official news, the blockchain-based private credit platform Techdollar announced the completion of a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with participation from NoLimit Holdings, Reforge VC, as well as individual investors such as Newmichwill, RoyLearner, and Ansem.It is reported that Techdollar is a blockchain-based private credit platform that allows founders, employees, venture capitalists, and family offices to obtain loans secured by equity in private tech companies without having to sell shares. The platform adopts a stablecoin issuance mechanism and integrates with on-chain liquidity infrastructure to provide rapid capital access while maintaining private off-chain custody and compliant underwriting processes.

According to official news, the prediction market index provider Adjacent announced the completion of a $2.5 million Pre-Seed round of financing, with investors including Night Capital, VanEck, UFO Holdings, Maven11, and DCG.Adjacent is an independent third-party event contract and prediction market index provider, and this week it launched the U.S. election index series RED and BLUE. Adjacent stated that it is rapidly expanding its index products to cover global elections, finance, economics, and other fields.

Sivers Semiconductors (SIVE) has completed a round of financing amounting to 700 million Swedish Krona, which was oversubscribed several times, leading to a slight increase in the scale from the original plan. The funds from this round of financing will primarily be used to expand the production capacity of InP (indium phosphide) lasers and optical amplifiers, promoting the company's adoption of a fab-light model for capacity ramp-up.The analysis by the white-haired stock god indicates that this financing suggests SIVE may have reached a critical turning point for scaling development. The financing price was set at 57 Swedish Krona per share, while the current stock price is about 63 Swedish Krona, close to the market price, which helps to form price support. With the entry of institutional funds, not only has the risk on SIVE's balance sheet been reduced, but it has also provided financial support for its transition to the high-volume manufacturing (HVM) stage.

According to RootData's financing data statistics, in June 2026, the crypto primary market disclosed a total of 42 financing and merger events, with a total financing amount of approximately $898 million, a month-on-month decrease of 60.5% and a year-on-year decrease of 67.3%. Additionally, there were 15 merger events, with a disclosed amount of approximately $305 million. Overall, funds continue to concentrate on infrastructure, DeFi, and CeFi, with institutional-level capital markets, on-chain credit, derivatives trading, and stablecoin payment/settlement becoming the main incremental directions.DeFi was the most active sector this month, completing 18 financing and merger events, with a disclosed amount of approximately $330 million. Morpho completed a $175 million financing, becoming the largest financing project in the DeFi sector this month; Fomo completed a $75 million Series B financing, indicating that on-chain trading and consumer-level entry points still have appeal.The infrastructure sector had a total of 13 events, with a disclosed amount of approximately $453 million, ranking first in terms of amount. Projects such as Digital Asset, Ornn, and Trace Finance received funding support around institutional-level capital markets, AI computing financialization, and stablecoin settlement infrastructure.CeFi completed a total of 12 events. Although there were not many non-merger financing events, mergers and institutional trading services performed outstandingly. SBI Holdings acquired the Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank for approximately $289 million, becoming the largest merger event this month; SignalPlus completed a $50 million Series B1 financing, and EDGE Markets completed a $29.2 million Series A financing, indicating that institutional-level trading, derivatives, and compliant financial services are still key areas for capital allocation.The top five projects this month totaled approximately $944 million, accounting for about 76% of the overall disclosed scale. The top three projects in terms of financing and merger amounts are: institutional-level blockchain infrastructure company [Digital Asset](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/Digital Asset?k=MzYyMA== "Blockchain software and service provider") ($355 million), Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank ($289 million, merger), and on-chain credit protocol Morpho ($175 million).In terms of investment institutions, Coinbase Ventures, a16z, Pantera Capital, CoinFund, Paradigm, Animoca Brands, HashKey Capital, and others remain active, with top capital more inclined to bet on projects with clear institutional clients, compliance paths, and real use cases.

According to the latest weekly report from Gate Ventures, market risk appetite has further cooled, leading to an overall correction in the cryptocurrency market. BTC fell 6.4% over the week, ETH fell 7.9%, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies declined by 5.4%, with the Fear and Greed Index dropping into the "Extreme Fear" range.In terms of capital flow, the spot BTC ETF saw a net outflow of $1.79 billion in a single week, setting a record for the largest single-week net outflow in history, and has recorded outflows for seven consecutive weeks; the spot ETH ETF experienced a net outflow of $273.3 million during the same period, putting continued pressure on market liquidity. Meanwhile, STRC under Strategy has traded below par value for the sixth consecutive week, with the market continuing to focus on its dividend rate adjustments and capital operation progress.In terms of industry development, RWA applications and blockchain infrastructure construction are continuing to advance. Enso launched an RWA application supporting the trading of over 500 tokenized assets, further promoting the development of the tokenized asset trading ecosystem; the SEC and CFTC are coordinating to publicly solicit market opinions on the portfolio margin system, continuously improving market infrastructure.In terms of investment and financing, a total of 18 financing deals were completed last week, with a disclosed total financing amount of $210.3 million. Among them, the DeFi sector had the highest financing scale, raising a total of $114 million, indicating that market funds continue to focus on on-chain financial innovation and infrastructure construction.

SHAZ announced the completion of a $1.6 billion financing to support a six-year strategic partnership with NVIDIA; 11 hours ago, a fund under Leopold Aschenbrenner announced an increase in its holdings of SHAZ to 19.9%. The former rose by 1.45%, while the latter saw an after-hours increase of 14%. The SEC requires that public reports be submitted when a fund's shareholding exceeds 5%.

According to the Science and Technology Innovation Board Daily, the recent round of financing for Moon's Dark Side Kimi, with a valuation of 20 billion USD, has been completed, and a new round of financing has been initiated, with a pre-financing valuation rising to 31.5 billion USD. According to sources close to Kimi, the company disclosed its latest revenue data during this round of financing communication: ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) has surpassed 300 million USD. The revenue growth for Kimi in this round mainly comes from increased developer usage and API revenue driven by model iterations. Currently, API revenue accounts for over 70% of Kimi's total revenue and continues to rise. Kimi's revenue curve is beginning to show characteristics of the early commercialization stage of Anthropic: increased developer usage, a higher proportion of API revenue, growth in overseas paying users, and a price system uplift driven by model capability iterations.

XRPLRipple is actively promoting the addition of a layer of lending infrastructure on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), enabling institutions to use on-chain tokenized assets as collateral for financing, while the loan terms are automatically executed by the protocol, with credit assessments and lending decisions still made by off-chain institutions.According to reports, the proposal is named the XRPL Lending Protocol (corresponding to the XLS-65 and XLS-66 standards), which is currently still in the technical draft stage and must be approved through validator voting before it can go live on the mainnet, but it is already available for developer testing on the test network.The design of the protocol splits the lending process into two parts: on-chain mechanisms responsible for fund pool management, interest calculation, repayment execution, and default handling; while borrower credit assessments and loan term settings remain with traditional financial institutions to meet compliance requirements in different jurisdictions.Ripple states that this mechanism is primarily aimed at institutional short-term liquidity needs, such as in cross-border payment scenarios, where temporary financing is obtained through stablecoins or collateralized assets before settlement, to enhance capital efficiency.Analysts believe that this solution attempts to introduce a "rule-based lending infrastructure" similar to traditional finance while maintaining the open network attributes of XRPL, but it still faces competition from established on-chain lending protocols like Aave, Compound, and Maple.

Early space fintech company Nebex, founded by former Axiom Space CEO Tejpaul Bhatia, announced the completion of a $30,000,000 seed round financing, led by Google Ventures, a subsidiary of Alphabet.

According to a report by The Paper, the embodied intelligence company Zhi Ping Fang has recently completed a series of new financing, with a total amount of nearly 5 billion yuan (approximately 700 million USD), and a valuation exceeding 20 billion yuan, making it the first embodied intelligence company in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to officially surpass a valuation of 20 billion yuan. Zhi Ping Fang stated that after the completion of this financing, it will accelerate the iteration and large-scale production process of the "robot brain," further solidifying its integrated capabilities of "model × hardware × scenario."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned in its latest annual report that the bursting of the AI bubble, a rebound in inflation, and sovereign debt pressures are the three core risks currently threatening global economic prosperity. The report pointed out that if the returns on investment in the AI sector fall short of expectations, it could lead to the current capital expenditure boom evolving into a long-term investment contraction, triggering significant macroeconomic turbulence.The BIS specifically cautioned about the complex "circular financing" model within the AI industry chain, such as cross-shareholding and computing power binding procurement agreements between chip manufacturers and AI laboratories or cloud service providers. The institution emphasized that such transactions often lack transparency and pose the risk of the same asset being mortgaged multiple times. In addition, energy shocks caused by geopolitical conflicts could trigger a secondary rebound in inflation, compounded by high-leverage arbitrage trading by hedge funds in the government bond market, which would further exacerbate the fragility of the global financial system.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated in an interview with CNBC that he remains optimistic about Bitcoin but believes that Strategy's model of financing Bitcoin purchases through preferred stock has harmed the crypto market.Garlinghouse said, "Financial engineering will not drive long-term value." He believes that the long-term value of any digital asset comes from its utility and stated, "Michael Saylor's team is not focused on the right things, which harms the overall market."The focus of Garlinghouse's criticism is the financing mechanism used by Strategy to accumulate Bitcoin. For about the past year, Strategy has raised funds through the issuance of preferred stock to continue purchasing Bitcoin. Its STRC stock has an annual dividend yield of 11.5%, designed to trade close to $100.Garlinghouse pointed out that STRC is currently about 25% below that level, which is a "harsh denial" of the strategy. STRC hit an all-time low on Thursday, at one point trading about 26% below par value. Meanwhile, Strategy's common stock fell to its lowest level since February 2024, closing around $82 on Friday; Bitcoin dropped below $59,000.This week, Strategy's financing model is facing more pressure. CryptoQuant stated that Strategy should pause Bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash reserves. The coverage period for STRC dividend payments has shrunk from over 7 years to about 14 months. When STRC falls below $100, the mechanism of issuing stock and purchasing Bitcoin will stall, which is also the reason for the company to pause this mechanism.Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer believes that Strategy's financing engine has simply become "less efficient," rather than having failed, and opposes comparing STRC to assets that have completely collapsed.

According to official news, AI-assisted development of the Web3 infrastructure layer Canopy has completed a $8.5 million seed round financing, with participation from Arrington Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Borderless Capital, and SNZ Capital.The raised funds will be used to support its mainnet launch, expansion of the engineering team, and the development of native AI development tools.

Stablecoin native payment company Daya has completed a $2.4 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and the Aptos Foundation. Daya was co-founded by Nigerian entrepreneurs Aleph L and Paul Joe, who previously co-founded Helicarrier (an early African crypto exchange and stablecoin remittance platform) and have worked at Circle, Microsoft, and Lyrik Ventures. It is reported that Daya aims to build a financial operating layer for cross-border businesses in Africa, integrating local banks, foreign exchange, crypto withdrawals and deposits, and payment processors through a single dashboard to achieve automated routing of optimal payment paths.

Former Ren Protocol founder Loong Wang announced the launch of the tokenized financial product settlement network Metal and completed a seed round financing co-led by Airwallex and Capital49, with Airwallex also joining as the first design partner. Metal was co-founded by Loong Wang and former Libra project partner lead Catherine Porter, aiming to build an institutional-grade full-stack infrastructure for tokenized financial products, natively supporting AI agents, authentication, and authorization, while providing global withdrawal and recharge channels covering 200 countries and 90 currencies.

The AI infrastructure project Orthogonal announced the completion of a $4.3 million financing round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, and other institutions.

According to PR Newswire, the AI Agent infrastructure project Orthogonal announced the completion of a $4.3 million seed round financing, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, Outbound, Surreal, and others.Orthogonal positions itself as the underlying infrastructure for internet discovery, orchestration, and payment aimed at AI agents, providing a full suite of capabilities for service retrieval, cross-tool task automation, and on-chain instant payments.It is reported that the funds raised in this round will be used for core platform iterative development, expanding the engineering and marketing teams, continuously increasing the scale of platform developers, and improving the interconnectivity ecosystem for AI agents.

According to PR Newswire, AI Agent infrastructure company Sail Research announced the completion of $80 million in seed and Series A financing, led by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, CRV, Theory Ventures, and others.Sail Research focuses on building infrastructure for AI Agents, aiming to address the computational power, cost, and operational limitations of current artificial intelligence systems in long-duration, multi-step tasks. Its API is compatible with OpenAI interfaces and supports mainstream open-source models such as DeepSeek and Gemma.