financing

According to Bloomberg, the AI model evaluation platform Arena completed a new round of financing of $200 million with a valuation of $3.1 billion, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Salesforce Ventures and Dell Technologies Capital.Arena originated from the Chatbot Arena research project at the University of California, Berkeley, and is known for its public large model rankings, achieving an annual revenue of $100 million in June of this year.

Programmable privacy infrastructure Soda Labs has completed a $3 million seed round financing, led by NextBlock. Over the past two and a half years, Soda Labs has developed a cryptographic privacy solution that combines garbled circuits with multi-party computation (GC-MPC), relying on proven standard cryptography such as AES and SHA256. Its privacy engine runs on standard cloud CPUs without the need for dedicated hardware, enabling applications to achieve privacy computing while maintaining a connection to existing public blockchain infrastructure.

According to Fortune, AI trading agent startup Catalyst announced the completion of a $30 million seed round financing, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Jump Trading, Peak XV, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Coinbase, and Premji Invest.The company was co-founded by Justin Zheng and Dylan Iskandar in 2025, aiming to assist ordinary investors in formulating and executing trading strategies through AI agents, allowing users to express investment goals in natural language. The AI agent then translates these into trading strategies and completes processes such as asset selection, cost optimization, and trade execution, but the final trades still require user confirmation. It is reported that Catalyst has currently completed a round of testing aimed at high-frequency trading users.

According to an official post from Chainlink, it has launched the institutional financing and collateral management solution Fulcrum, which separates financing agreement management from cash and collateral settlement networks, supports cross-chain repurchase (Repo) and 24/7 collateral movement, and will demonstrate with DTCC at Sibos 2026.Chainlink also stated that 40 new integrations were added in September, covering 24 users including Aave, Coinbase, Paxos, Monad, Tempo, and others.

Alphabet's AI drug development company Isomorphic Labs, led by Demis Hassabis, is in early negotiations for a new round of financing, with a valuation of at least $40 billion, potentially reaching $50 billion.The company completed a $2.1 billion Series B financing in May this year. Reports also indicate that the application of AI in the biopharmaceutical field is still in its early stages, and more efforts are needed before clinical trials and product launches. This negotiation is still in the early stages, and specific terms and investor information have not been disclosed.

Bitcoin collateralized lending is gradually expanding from a cryptocurrency financial scene focused on trading and investment to real credit needs such as tuition fees, living expenses, business operating funds, and real estate, showing a significant change in market usage. Institutions like SALT Lending and Ledn indicate that more and more borrowers are choosing to collateralize BTC for liquidity instead of selling their holdings.Since its establishment in 2018, Ledn has issued loans totaling over $11 billion and expects this scale to grow to $1 trillion in the coming years. Its clients include entrepreneurs and institutional investors seeking operating funds, as well as individuals borrowing to pay for children's education, real estate investments, and short-term living expenses. This trend indicates that the financial attributes of BTC are extending from "tradable assets" further to "collateralizable assets." Borrowers hope to unlock its value without selling BTC while still retaining potential upside exposure.At the same time, institutions like SALT are promoting fixed-rate, long-term products, bringing crypto collateralized loans closer to traditional credit models like home mortgages. Coinbase has also recently launched fixed-rate BTC collateralized loans through Morpho. Ledn further anticipates that similar models may expand from BTC to traditional hard assets like gold, and the boundaries of the collateralized asset lending market are widening.

The cryptocurrency payment company Ripple has expanded into stablecoins, asset custody, and has entered the long-term leveraged exchange-traded fund (ETF) swap financing sector, which has been dominated by large banks, becoming an important participant. According to The Wall Street Journal, leveraged ETF managers achieve target returns through total return swaps and other derivatives, such as amplifying the daily fluctuations of a particular stock or index; banks or brokers sell related contracts and charge fees, then buy stocks or derivatives to hedge their own exposure.According to Morningstar Direct, there are 593 leveraged ETFs in the United States, managing over $256 billion in assets, of which 426 are single-stock leveraged funds, a category that received regulatory approval in 2022. Ripple entered swap financing after acquiring the prime broker Hidden Road, which caters to cryptocurrency hedge funds last year; this business is now called Ripple Prime, which is collaborating with multiple ETF providers and hopes to expand to include other investment managers, including hedge funds.On Tuesday, Ripple Prime announced it would provide prime brokerage, clearing, and financing services to the hedge fund Brevan Howard. Ripple Prime President Noel Kimmel stated that this is a growing and significant part of the company's business. The report cited an example where a fund paid Ripple at a rate of 4 percentage points above the overnight bank financing rate, which as of Tuesday was approximately equivalent to 8% of the fund's assets on an annualized basis; this cost is included in the net asset value of the leveraged fund, separate from the approximately 1% management fee.

Manus's parent company, Butterfly Effect, has officially announced that it has recently completed a new round of financing exceeding 500 million dollars. This round of financing was led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, with existing shareholders Tencent, Sequoia China, and ZhenFund continuing to support.

According to reports from Lei Feng Network·Whale Rhino, AI hardware company Loke Technology NOOKLAB has completed several rounds of financing, with investors including Sequoia China, Linear Capital, and others, accumulating a total amount of several hundred million RMB, with a current valuation close to 100 million USD. The two rounds of financing were concentrated at the beginning of this year.Loke Technology's founder Raymond was born in 1996 and has previously worked at OPPO, OnePlus, Anker, and ByteDance, where he was responsible for the second-generation AI glasses in the Byte Ocean team. Its first product, Moonphase Flip, weighs 54 grams and attaches to the back of the phone via MagSafe magnetic suction. The company defines it as a low-disruption AI portable screen, primarily targeting overseas markets. The team currently consists of about 30 people.

New York startup Vest Labs announced the completion of a $13 million seed round financing, which closed in July this year, led by Portal Ventures, with participation from individual investors including Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and KKR executives.Vest was co-founded by University of Pennsylvania dropout Justin Ma, Rikuya Takatsu, and Maximilian Tsiang. The platform allows qualified traders to use company funds to trade perpetual futures contracts around the clock, with traders able to receive up to 80% of the profit share, differentiating itself from traditional proprietary trading firms that charge users for simulated account fees. The company plans to use the funding to develop a mobile application, expand its 22-person team, and broaden the range of tradable asset classes.

Robot data startup Mecka AI has completed a $60 million Series B funding round, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Nvidia, Microsoft's venture fund M12, Qualcomm, and Samsung Electronics.Mecka AI is a startup dedicated to collecting and analyzing human motion data to train humanoid robots and other types of robots. According to previous reports, Mecka AI is set to complete a funding round led by Sequoia, with a valuation of approximately $500 million.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Broadcom (AVGO.O) is customizing AI chips for OpenAI and is seeking over $50 billion in financing.

The International Monetary Fund has completed the second and third reviews of the $1.4 billion financing mechanism for El Salvador, disbursing $139 million and granting exemptions after the country violated Bitcoin holding limits.The International Monetary Fund currently expects that, aside from documented donations, the El Salvador government will not purchase more Bitcoin and will increase the transparency of public Bitcoin holdings.

SpaceX's stock price fell by 1.5%, with reports stating that the company is seeking $40 billion in financing to purchase Nvidia chips.

According to Fortune, retail proprietary trading startup Vest Labs announced the completion of a $13 million seed round of financing, led by Portal Ventures, with some executives from Citadel Securities, BlackRock, and KKR participating as individuals. The company did not disclose its post-financing valuation.Vest allows eligible traders to use the company's funds to trade perpetual contracts in real markets around the clock, with traders able to retain up to 80% of the profits, while the remainder goes to the company. The company stated that compared to some retail proprietary trading firms that rely on charging fees for simulated trading accounts, this model allows Vest to benefit from the success of traders rather than betting on their failure.The financing will be used to develop a mobile application, expand the current team of 22 people, and increase the variety of assets available for trading around the clock. According to Vest's own disclosure, as of late September, 26% of the approximately 27,000 traders on the platform had received cash payments, with monthly active traders and trading volume both increasing by over 300% month-over-month.

According to Globenewswire, the stablecoin payment infrastructure company Noah announced the completion of a $38 million seed round financing, with participation from Endeit Capital, FJ Labs, LocalGlobe, Felix Capital, and several well-known angel investors.The new funds will be used to expand international remittance services, develop regulatory frameworks, and provide cross-border payment services based on stablecoins for businesses and individuals.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the developer of the open-source intelligent agent Hermes, Nous Research, announced the completion of a $90 million financing round at a valuation of $1.5 billion. The plan is to launch the open-source AI assistant tool to enterprise users.The company previously launched the local and cloud-based AI agent Hermes, which has built-in skills such as searching, coding, and image understanding, and can automatically learn and expand its capabilities from user interactions.

According to official news, the P2P AI inference network Antseed has officially been released, while also disclosing that the nonprofit foundation Antseed Foundation has completed a $2.4 million token round of financing. Spark Capital led the investment, with participation from Collider, DCG, North Island Ventures, Reciprocal Ventures, Relay Capital, and Venice.ai.Antseed aims to apply BitTorrent's peer-to-peer model to the AI inference field, allowing different providers to sell models and Agent services directly. After running Antseed's local router on their computers, users can connect tools like Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, etc., to the same address. Each call is selected by the router based on price, speed, reputation, and privacy conditions, with fees settled directly in USDC on Base. Providers can run their own local models, fine-tune models, or offer other AI services and set their own prices.The biggest difference between Antseed and OpenRouter is that there is no unified platform responsible for forwarding in between. Buyers connect directly to providers, while Antseed is responsible for discovery, routing, reputation, and payment protocols. Ordinary providers can still see the requests they handle; users can also choose providers verified through TEE, allowing requests to run in a trusted execution environment.Antseed is also continuing to improve verification mechanisms such as model fingerprints, signature responses, and audits to prevent providers from misrepresenting cheaper models as more expensive ones. The code has been open-sourced, and the network is operational, although GitHub is currently addressing compatibility issues with Codex, Claude Desktop, and others.

According to SolanaFloor, the Solana perpetual futures trading platform Imperial has completed a $1.5 million seed round financing, with a valuation of $15 million, led by Foundation Capital and supported by angel investors in the Solana ecosystem.The funds from this round will be used to expand Imperial's product portfolio, including a perpetual contract aggregator, a lending platform, and the flagship project Armada. Imperial's Armada is a perpetual contract AMM in the Solana ecosystem, sourcing liquidity from DeFi platforms like Hyperliquid, allowing traders to access a deeper order book without leaving Solana.

OKX founder and CEO Star posted that he welcomes Circle, Ripple, and SC Ventures as investors in OKX. OKX is not raising funds due to financial needs but is choosing to bring in strategic partners who share a long-term vision consensus with OKX in areas such as stablecoins, payments, institutional markets, and next-generation financial infrastructure.ChainCatcher previously reported that, according to Bloomberg, the cryptocurrency exchange platform OKX completed a new round of financing with a valuation of $25 billion, with existing partners and hedge fund Qube Research & Technologies participating in the investment.OKX stated that Circle Internet Group, Ripple, and SC Ventures, the investment arm of Standard Chartered Bank, all participated in this round of financing. OKX declined to disclose the specific amount of financing but indicated that this round is an extension of the financing from March of this year. At that time, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), invested approximately $200 million in OKX at the same $25 billion valuation.