financing

According to Fortune, Catena Labs, an AI financial infrastructure company founded by Circle co-founder Sean Neville, announced the completion of a $30,000,000 Series A funding round, co-led by Acrew Capital and Andreessen Horowitz's a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, and QED.Catena Labs focuses on building "AI-native banking" infrastructure, aiming to enable AI Agents to securely perform financial operations such as payments, transfers, and fund management. The company also announced that it has applied for a national trust bank charter from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to support payment processing and client fund custody.

According to The Wall Street Journal, manufacturing startup SendCutSend has completed a $110 million financing round, co-led by Sequoia Capital, cryptocurrency venture capital fund Paradigm, and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, bringing its valuation to $1 billion.It is reported that Paradigm was originally a top-tier crypto-native venture capital firm, managing approximately $12.7 billion in assets. However, since 2023, the firm has begun to adjust its strategic direction: it removed references to "crypto" and "Web3" from its official website, and co-founder Matt Huang publicly stated, "The development of AI is too interesting to ignore." Against this backdrop, investing in SendCutSend aligns with Paradigm's logic of expanding towards "AI + robotics + advanced manufacturing."

According to The Block, the lightweight mobile crypto wallet Sorted Wallet has completed a $4.4 million seed round financing, of which $3.4 million is equity financing, co-led by Tether and Gnosis, with participation from individual angel investors such as Movement, Angel Invest Group, and the founder of RWA.io. An additional $1 million comes from strategic support from Vox Solutions.Sorted Wallet was launched in 2022, with an installation package of only 10 MB, making it the lightest crypto wallet. It has been downloaded 500,000 times, with the fastest-growing markets including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Bangladesh, and Madagascar.

AI patent startup Stilta announced the completion of a $10.5 million seed round financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Y Combinator and individual investors from companies such as OpenAI, Legora, Sana, Lovable, and Listen Labs.The new funding will primarily be used for hiring engineers, patent experts, and marketing teams. The company plans to expand its team to about 10 people over the next 3 to 6 months and aims to establish an office in New York by the end of this year or early 2027.Stilta focuses on AI Agent-driven patent management software, primarily targeting scenarios such as patent infringement identification, patent licensing opportunity exploration, and patent litigation defense. Its platform can analyze hundreds of millions of patents, research papers, and historical web data to help companies and law firms manage patent assets.The company was founded this year by former McKinsey members Oskar Block, Petrus Werner, Tobias Estreen, and Oscar Adamsson, and was selected for the YC Winter 2026 incubation program. Currently, about two-thirds of its clients are from the corporate sector, while the rest are from law firms.According to reports, Stilta is developing hundreds of AI Agents to perform various tasks such as infringement analysis and patent invalidation analysis, with customized adjustments for highly specialized fields like pharmaceuticals. In recent years, a16z and YC have continued to increase their investments in the legal tech sector. Previously, a16z has invested multiple rounds in the AI legal assistant Harvey; YC has also recently invested in legal AI companies such as Legora, PointOne, and Parlai.

According to CoinDesk, after Mastercard abandoned its investment plans, crypto infrastructure company Zerohash is raising a new round of funding at a valuation of over $1.5 billion. Mastercard had previously considered making a strategic investment in the company but later acquired BVNK for $1.8 billion, abandoning the original plan. Zerohash is raising new funds at a valuation higher than the $1.5 billion discussed at the beginning of the year.Founded in 2017, the company provides APIs and embedded development tools for financial institutions and fintech companies, serving over 5 million users across 190 countries. Clients include Morgan Stanley, Interactive Brokers, Stripe, BlackRock's BUIDL fund, Franklin Templeton, and DraftKings. Zerohash completed a $104 million D-2 round of financing at a $1 billion valuation in September 2025, led by Interactive Brokers.

According to Bloomberg, Moment is a fintech company founded by former Citadel Securities quantitative traders and researchers. After signing partnerships with Edward Jones, LPL Financial, and Hightower Advisors over the past year, the company completed a $78 million financing round, led by Index Ventures, with existing investors Andreessen Horowitz and Avra also participating.Moment primarily helps financial institutions automate fixed income and equity trading technology. The company's previous financing round was in July of last year, when it raised $36 million.

Stablecoin infrastructure startup Checker announced the completion of an $8 million pre-seed and seed funding round, with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, Framework Ventures, Bitso, Airtm, DFS Lab, Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity. The project's main business is to help financial institutions launch and scale stablecoins and related products by providing a single API.It is reported that Checker has processed over $3 billion in transaction volume in the past 12 months and plans to use the new funds to expand its network of financial institutions to Brazil, Kenya, Hong Kong, and the United States, while also planning to launch AI agents for customer onboarding, compliance assessments, and treasury operations.

The stablecoin infrastructure startup Checker announced the completion of an $8 million pre-seed and seed funding round, with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, Framework Ventures, Bitso, Airtm, DFS Lab, Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity.The project's main business is to help financial institutions launch and scale stablecoins and related products by providing a single API. It is reported that Checker has processed over $3 billion in transaction volume in the past 12 months and plans to use the new funds to expand its network of financial institutions to Brazil, Kenya, Hong Kong, and the United States, while also planning to launch AI agents for customer onboarding, compliance assessments, and treasury operations.

According to the official announcement, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed amendments to the rules and forms related to registered offerings, aiming to enhance the efficiency, flexibility, and reduce costs of public fundraising for listed companies, while simplifying the information disclosure framework for listed companies.According to the proposal, more listed companies will be able to conduct shelf offerings, and more companies will be eligible for registration and communication conveniences that were previously only available to "well-known seasoned issuers." Broker-dealers will be able to provide research coverage for more listed companies, and the state securities law registration and qualification requirements for multi-state registered offerings will be excluded at the federal level.Additionally, the proposal suggests raising the threshold for large accelerated filers from $700 million to $2 billion, with the stipulation that companies will not be included in this category based on market capitalization for at least 60 months post-IPO. The public comment period will last for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

According to Fortune magazine, Eisen announced the completion of a $10 million Series A financing round, led by MissionOG, bringing its total funding to $18.5 million. Previously, the company completed an $8.5 million seed round, led by Index Ventures, which had not been publicly disclosed. Institutions such as First Round Capital, Cowboy Ventures, Homebrew, and Restive Ventures also participated.Eisen provides a service to financial service platforms for handling the "unclaimed property transfer" process, while also helping to locate clients and prevent funds from being transferred to state governments in the U.S. after becoming unclaimed. The company's co-founder Osgood (formerly a product manager at Coinbase) is particularly focused on the field of crypto assets. An increasing number of states are beginning to view crypto assets as transferable unclaimed property. Although the amounts may be small individually, the overall scale is quite substantial: U.S. states collectively hold about $70 billion in funds through the escheatment mechanism, which are assets legally turned over to state governments after accounts have been inactive for a long time.

According to Forbes, the cryptocurrency trading platform Ouinex announced the completion of a $3.5 million financing round, bringing the total funding to $9 million. It is reported that all investors in this round of financing are retail and professional traders from the platform, with no venture capital firms involved. The new funds will be used to build a "Non-Centralized Order Book (No-CLOB)" model, aiming to avoid and protect retail traders from directly competing with large market makers. It is reported that the platform uses a pricing mechanism similar to that of forex and CFD brokers, with market makers providing buy and sell quotes, but they cannot view user orders or trade directly with users.

Web3 user-generated content (UGC) platform Tomoland announced the completion of a $2 million financing round, led by Sky9 Capital, with participation from WAGMI Ventures, Aureus Dealers, and angel investors from Meta, Depinx Capital, Netease, and Virtuals. The new funds are intended to support its efforts to build a system that combines user-generated content with Web3 ownership and to promote the integration of the gaming ecosystem with the Web3 economy.

According to Techfundingnews, London-based AI audit automation startup Calibre has announced the completion of a $3.3 million Pre-Seed funding round, led by Vicus Ventures and CIV.Calibre was founded by former Palantir executives with the goal of using AI Agents to enhance efficiency in the certification and auditing industry. The company believes that current auditors spend a significant amount of time on document review and process organization rather than applying professional judgment. Calibre plans to deploy AI Agents to automatically handle repetitive tasks such as document review, information extraction, and compliance verification, aiming to reduce labor costs and improve efficiency in the certification industry.Investors believe that the certification and auditing industry has long faced issues of cumbersome processes and high reliance on manual labor, and that AI Agents are expected to become an important infrastructure in this field.

According to The Block, the AI settlement layer AEON has completed an $8 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by YZi Labs, with participation from IDG Capital, HashKey Capital, Stanford Blockchain Builders Fund, and Oak Grove Ventures. The structure of this financing round and the post-investment valuation have not been disclosed. AEON plans to use the funds from this round to develop a settlement layer aimed at supporting interactions between AI agents.AEON launched its first AI payment product in May, enabling AI agents to connect with over 50 million physical merchants worldwide. In addition, AEON has partnered with BNB Chain to launch a product called x402 Facilitator, which is natively built on BNB Chain infrastructure, providing verifiable transactions, on-chain settlements, and tamper-proof receipts for service providers within the BNB ecosystem.

According to NADA NEWS, ReYuu Japan, a company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Standard Market, announced that, after mutual consultation, it has terminated the basic agreement reached with the Canadian investment company Universal Digital Inc. regarding a financing framework of up to $100 million (approximately 15 billion yen).The agreement was originally intended to promote external financing arrangements related to its cryptocurrency asset reserve (DAT) strategy, but it was not a formal loan contract, and the establishment of the financing framework or actual borrowing had not been completed. ReYuu Japan stated that the capital market environment for listed companies implementing cryptocurrency asset reserve strategies has changed, and investor attitudes have become more cautious; this termination does not mean that its cryptocurrency asset reserve strategy is halted, and it will continue to assess based on market conditions, financial stability, and shareholder value.

The tokenized financial market infrastructure Digital Asset Clearing Center (DACC) announced the completion of a $10 million strategic financing, with participation from Conflux, Global InfoTech, Fosun International, Blockstone, Avior Capital, Fintech World, Satoshi Ventures, and BridgeTower. DACC currently provides end-to-end "Clearing-as-a-Service" for financial institutions, and the new funds will support its construction of compliant financial settlement and clearing infrastructure.

According to Aastocks, the tokenized financial market infrastructure Digital Asset Clearing Center (DACC) announced the completion of a $10 million strategic financing, with participation from Conflux, Global InfoTech, Fosun International, Blockstone, Avior Capital, Fintech World, Satoshi Ventures, and BridgeTower.DACC currently provides end-to-end "Clearing-as-a-Service" for financial institutions, and the new funds will support its construction of compliant financial settlement and clearing infrastructure.