financing

According to The Block, Bitcoin hardware wallet manufacturer Foundation has completed a new round of financing of $6.4 million, led by Fulgur Ventures with participation from Arche Capital and others, aimed at expanding from Bitcoin self-custody wallets to scenarios such as identity, multi-factor authentication, and AI agent authorization. This round of financing brings the company's total funding to $16.5 million, with valuation and round structure undisclosed.Foundation also announced that its flagship device, Passport Prime, is now available for sale to all users, integrating a Bitcoin hardware wallet, FIDO security key, 2FA storage, confidential information vault, and 50 GB of encrypted storage, emphasizing "human authorization" through dedicated hardware. In addition, the company is expanding the scope of the KeyOS developer platform and plans to launch the KeyOS app store by the end of the second quarter, with initial partners including Cake Wallet.

Crypto financial infrastructure Cycles announced the completion of a $6.4 million seed round financing, led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Compound VC, Primitive Ventures, and others. After this round of financing, the total amount raised has reached $8.7 million.The company aims to build a private clearing network for the crypto market and seeks to enhance capital utilization through a "clearing network" mechanism, achieving multi-party net settlement through zero-knowledge proofs and trusted execution environments, thereby reducing counterparty risk and minimizing liquidity consumption.

The digital asset trading platform Temple Digital Group has completed a private fundraising round, with SBI Group as the lead investor. The specific amount of financing has not been disclosed. Temple is expanding its product portfolio by introducing new capital and is preparing to go public in a regulated market in the second half of 2026.Previously, it was reported that Temple Digital Group completed a $5 million seed round of financing last October, led by Paper Ventures.

According to BBX data, yesterday the layout of traditional payment institutions in the cryptocurrency infrastructure showed divergence, with institutions having clear differences in their views on ETH and the altcoin sector. The core dynamics are as follows:Mastercard Incorporated (NYSE: $MA) signed an acquisition agreement for the UK stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK on March 17 for a maximum of $1.8 billion (including $300 million in performance-based payments), which directly led Mastercard to abandon its previously pursued strategic investment plan in Zerohash (a privately held company). According to CoinDesk on May 19, Mastercard exited negotiations with Zerohash after the completion of the BVNK acquisition, and Zerohash is currently seeking to initiate a new financing round with a valuation of over $1.5 billion (higher than the $1 billion valuation established during the D-2 round of financing of $104 million in September 2025); the strategic logic behind Mastercard's acquisition of BVNK is that BVNK has a stablecoin payment infrastructure covering over 130 countries and a difficult-to-replicate combination of multi-country payment licenses; Mastercard's Chief Product Officer Jorn Lambert stated that the goal is to integrate stablecoins into the core network of Mastercard Move cross-border payments, rather than treating them as a peripheral experiment.JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: $JPM) analysts cited by CoinDesk on May 19 released the latest research report indicating that in the current market environment, Ethereum and the broader altcoin sector will continue to lag behind Bitcoin, primarily due to three structural weaknesses: weak network activity, stagnation in DeFi ecosystem growth (Solana's TVL has dropped from a peak of $13.1 billion in 2025 to about $5.5 billion), and limited real-world adoption scenarios; analysts believe that for the altcoin sector to catch up with Bitcoin's performance, a "significant network activity explosion" is a prerequisite, and this condition currently lacks visible short-term catalysts.

According to Bloomberg, informed sources revealed that the prediction market Kalshi has raised an additional $200 million from two new investors, Baillie Gifford and Layer Global, expanding the previous $1 billion financing led by Coatue Management, with the company's valuation remaining unchanged at $22 billion.Earlier, Kalshi announced at the beginning of this month the completion of a $1 billion Series F financing led by Coatue Management, with a valuation of $22 billion. Other participants included Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, IVP, Paradigm, Morgan Stanley, and ARK Invest. Kalshi's monthly trading volume in April exceeded $14 billion, with an annualized revenue of over $1.5 billion.

According to WSJ, Anthropic's revenue is expected to reach $10.9 billion in the second quarter, more than doubling from $4.8 billion in the first quarter, and it will achieve profitability at the operational level for the first time. Due to its enormous computing power requirements, the company may not be able to maintain profitability throughout the year; the operational profits have already accounted for the costs of training new models but do not include equity incentive expenses.As part of an ongoing financing round, Anthropic disclosed this data to investors, and this round of financing is likely to raise its valuation above that of OpenAI. Last summer, Anthropic shared financial data with investors, which indicated that the company might not achieve full-year profitability until at least 2028.

According to CNBC, fintech company Mercury announced the completion of a new round of financing of $200 million, led by TCV, with participation from institutions such as Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Coatue Management.Mercury primarily provides banking services for startups, currently serving over 300,000 clients and achieving approximately $650 million in annualized revenue. The company stated that the recent AI startup boom has significantly driven the demand for new company registrations and account openings, becoming an important driver of its growth.At the same time, Mercury also announced that it has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and plans to apply for a federal banking license to expand its lending and payment network (such as Zelle) access capabilities, while reducing reliance on partner banks. The company's founder stated that the future goal remains to go public rather than being acquired.

According to Fortune, the decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational announced the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round, led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures.The company is headquartered in the Cayman Islands and is dedicated to building an on-chain derivatives protocol for institutional and traditional financial traders. By aggregating liquidity from traditional finance and the crypto market, it aims to provide an on-chain market for real assets such as oil and commodities that can be traded instantly. Its core product, the Omni platform, adopts a zero-fee model and combines a liquidity pool mechanism to enhance market depth and execution efficiency.Variational stated that its goal is not to compete directly with centralized exchanges but to connect multi-source liquidity through a "brokerage-style" model, including traditional financial market makers and mainstream crypto trading platforms, to address the "liquidity cold start" problem in on-chain markets.

According to Bloomberg, AI search startup Exa Labs has completed a new round of financing of $250 million, led by a16z, with a post-investment valuation rising to $2.2 billion.The company focuses on building the infrastructure for search engines in the AI era. After this round of financing, its valuation has increased more than three times compared to about $700 million last fall. Industry insiders believe that with the accelerated popularization of artificial intelligence, the traditional search industry landscape dominated by Google may undergo a reshaping.

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.