financing

According to Bloomberg, DeepSeek announced the suspension of its second round of financing and verbally notified some potential investors that it would not sign investment agreements as expected. This suspension partly stems from founder Liang Wenfeng's dissatisfaction with the leak of a 4-hour internal transcript during its first financing deal, where he made 52 statements in an investor meeting regarding DeepSeek's organizational culture, open-source logic, technology roadmap, and views on the competitive landscape of the industry. The nearly 4-hour meeting record recently went viral on social media, including statements such as "The biggest gap between China and the U.S. in AI is computing power resources." Both DeepSeek and Liang Wenfeng have not confirmed the authenticity of the leaked record.DeepSeek stated that it may still choose to resume the transaction process in the future and has begun preparations for an initial public offering, with the IPO potentially being filed as early as this year.DeepSeek completed its first round of external financing in June 2026, raising over 50 billion yuan, approximately 7.4 billion dollars, with a post-investment valuation of about 50-59 billion dollars. It adopted a special structure, with most funds entering a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenfeng, where investors have no voting rights and are locked in for 5 years. Liang Wenfeng himself contributed about 20 billion yuan as the largest contributor, with participation from Tencent, CATL, JD.com, NetEase, and the Chinese National AI Fund. DeepSeek subsequently initiated discussions for its second round of financing in mid-July, targeting a valuation of about 71 billion dollars.

According to a report by the WSJ, The Boring Company, founded by Musk, is seeking new funding support, and the new round of financing will value the company at approximately $20 billion.The Boring Company was established in 2016 and primarily develops underground transportation tunnel technology aimed at alleviating urban traffic congestion. Currently, the company is operating the Vegas Loop project in Las Vegas, USA, and plans to expand its underground transportation network to more cities.

According to official news, the Robinhood Chain ecological token issuance platform Memecoin.Fun announced the completion of a $3.5 million strategic financing. This round of financing was completed through the USDG Token, led by Becker Ventures, with participation from BitValue Capital, Mason Labs, Negentropy Capital, and angel investor Billy Wen.The announcement stated that this round of financing will be used to accelerate the construction of core products and infrastructure, including the Robinhood Chain Launchpad infrastructure; cross-chain bridge function development, as well as the research and operation of the revolutionary Memecoin All-chain Platform.

AI infrastructure chiplet platform company TYLsemi announced the completion of a $43 million early financing round, led by Matter Venture Partners, with participation from Viola Ventures, GHOVC, Egis Technology, and others. The company launched a standardized chiplet portfolio covering IO interconnect, power management, and memory, and offers chiplet-based custom XPU design and packaging, as well as integrated supply chain services, claiming to reduce the time and cost of custom AI chips from architecture to mass production by up to 50%.The first batch includes TYL.IO for high-bandwidth interconnects such as PCIe, ESUN, and UALink, the TYL.Power integrated voltage regulation chiplet aimed at XPU, and the planned memory connection product TYL.Mem, providing custom AI silicon solutions for leading customers through the TYL.Forge full-stack platform.

According to market news, American defense technology company Anduril is in talks for financing, with a valuation of approximately $100 billion. No decisions have been made regarding future financing yet.It is reported that the company may ask investors to commit to participating in the subsequent second round of financing at a higher valuation.

According to Globenewswire, the stablecoin issuer Mandela Digital announced the completion of a $5 million financing round, with participation from Datavault AI. The new funds will be used for the construction of stablecoin infrastructure, compliance, exchange integration, liquidity and marketing, as well as to accelerate the launch of the 1:1 dollar-pegged stablecoin Mandela Dollar (MUSD).It is reported that Datavault AI will also provide technical support for MUSD, including an AI platform, blockchain tokenization, SanQtum quantum-resistant encryption, and a framework for real-world assets (RWA).

AI-native live streaming prediction platform K25.ai announced the completion of its Series A financing, receiving strategic support from Amber Group, with a post-investment valuation reaching $200 million, doubling its valuation in less than 60 days.This round of investment will accelerate K25.ai's product development, global expansion, institutional liquidity infrastructure, and creator ecosystem construction. Amber Group will provide support to K25.ai in market infrastructure, liquidity strategies, ecological development, and digital assets. K25.ai combines AI with live streaming content, allowing users to predict the trends in sports, esports, entertainment, and other scenarios in real-time, achieving real-time market generation, content monitoring, and outcome adjudication through its self-developed AI infrastructure. Previously, its Pre-A round was led by Nasdaq-listed company NewGenIVF Group.

According to Gelonghui, Atoms, a robotics company founded by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, has completed a $1.7 billion financing round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with Ben Horowitz joining the board. The equity investors in this round include Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group, and Uber.Horowitz focused the logic of this investment on specialized robots rather than humanoid robots. He pointed out that in heavy industry, specialized robots are much more suitable for completing most tasks than humanoid robots.

The non-custodial fixed-rate lending platform Tenor announced the completion of its seed round financing, led by Variant, with participation from Nascent, Prelude, Coinbase Ventures, Lattice, Very Early, and several angel investors continuing to provide support. The amount of financing has not been disclosed.Tenor is built on the fixed-rate lending underlying protocol Midnight based on Morpho. It is currently live on the Base network and will expand to more chains in the future, supporting features such as automatic extensions, OTC quotes, and floating interest rates for pending orders. The platform currently supports crypto asset collateralized lending and plans to expand into the foreign exchange and credit markets.

Chinese listed company Zhibao Technology announced that it has signed a non-binding term sheet with Joyer Tech to conduct PIPE financing based on 3,500 bitcoins.

JoinCare announced the completion of a new round of strategic seed funding, with participation from Titans Ventures, DI Foundation, and Candaq Ventures.This round of financing will be used to upgrade JoinCare's core infrastructure and the CareAgents AI-assisted research system, expand the global early-stage biopharmaceutical projects and the network of scientific and medical advisors, and promote the ecological applications and Launchpad construction of JoinCare.JoinCare is building an open DeSci incubation network aimed at early biopharmaceutical innovation, providing support for projects from discovery and scientific evaluation to collaborative incubation by connecting research teams, scientific and medical experts, ecological builders, and communities. In the future, JoinCare plans to expand this system to global research institutions and innovation teams, creating an AI-driven distributed biopharmaceutical innovation network.

According to The Block, the on-chain infrastructure layer SwarmBase, aimed at autonomous AI agents, has announced the completion of a $7 million financing round. This round was co-invested by Castrum Capital, M2M Capital, Notch Ventures, and Becker Ventures. Among them, Castrum Capital contributed an additional $4 million investment.It is reported that SwarmBase is a full-stack on-chain infrastructure protocol for autonomous AI agents. The platform provides core foundational modules such as identity, reputation, coordination, and transactions, enabling AI agents to operate independently through audited smart contracts.The funds raised in this round will primarily be used for the development of the SwarmBase protocol and ecological expansion, as well as preparations for the upcoming Token TGE. Castrum Capital stated that SwarmBase is well-positioned to lead the next wave of AI agents.

The Chinese AI large model company Dark Side of the Moon is accelerating its capitalization process, planning to start the final round of pre-IPO financing negotiations in August, with a target pre-investment valuation of $50 billion. Reports indicate that Dark Side of the Moon expects to complete a round of financing soon, corresponding to a valuation of approximately $31.5 billion. After completing this round of financing, the company will immediately engage in discussions for the next round of financing with potential investors, which may become its last private placement before entering the Hong Kong capital market.Market participants believe that if the financing plan proceeds smoothly, Dark Side of the Moon could initiate the process for a Hong Kong stock listing as early as this year. One of the key driving factors for this valuation increase is the company's recent release of the new generation large model Kimi K3. It is reported that Kimi K3 has a parameter scale of 28 trillion, supporting a context window of millions of tokens, making it one of the largest open-source models in the world by parameter scale. After the model was released, it quickly attracted market attention, prompting the company to adjust its new user subscription arrangements to ensure the user experience for existing customers.As the competition in generative AI enters a phase of comparison in computing power, user scale, and commercialization capabilities, large model companies are accelerating their search for capital support. Dark Side of the Moon's financing plan also reflects the market's ongoing interest in leading AI foundational model companies. However, the $50 billion valuation target also implies higher commercialization requirements. In the future, investors will focus on Dark Side of the Moon's revenue growth, control of computing costs, and whether the Kimi series models can form a stable business model. If the financing and listing plans proceed smoothly, Dark Side of the Moon may become an important case of capitalization for Chinese AI large model companies.

Insiders reveal that Samsung is in talks to participate in a new round of financing for the artificial intelligence startup Mistral, which could value Mistral at around 20 billion euros. This move will help the French company become a major alternative to American tech giants.One insider stated that Samsung had previously supported the company through its venture capital division and may invest about 1 billion euros in this new round of financing. This discussion reflects that AI developers are widely seeking to establish partnerships with semiconductor suppliers to address the situation where the demand for computing power in the industry far exceeds supply. Following the Trump administration's ban last month on foreign users accessing Anthropic's latest Mythos and Fable models, interest from European and Asian companies and governments in alternatives to leading American AI models has been steadily increasing. Since its establishment, Mistral has focused on developing open-source AI models that allow customers customization and control, meaning that no company or government can shut down these models.

Augustus is a startup that is building a federally chartered clearing bank. The company stated that it has raised $180 million, aiming to expand its dollar payment infrastructure, while stablecoins are reshaping the global financial system. This round of financing values Augustus at $1 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global Management, with participation from investors such as Hummingbird Ventures, QED Investors, as well as founders of Nubank, Ramp, Circle, and Deel.This financing comes at a time when banks, fintech companies, and crypto firms are competing to upgrade cross-border payment infrastructure. While the market's focus is mostly on stablecoin issuers, Augustus is targeting a less noticed but crucial part of the financial system—the correspondent banking system. Augustus CEO Ferdinand Dabitz stated in an interview, "We believe that the distribution of financial services is bottlenecked at the clearing bank level." He pointed out that traditional clearing systems are "slow, not available around the clock, take two days to settle, and are closed on weekends."

According to Jinshi Market news, Dark Side of the Moon is reportedly negotiating Pre-IPO financing with a valuation of 50 billion dollars.

According to Bloomberg, Venezuela's largest fintech company Cashea recently completed two rounds of financing totaling $100 million, including a $60 million Series B round led by FinSight Ventures in June this year, and a $40 million Series A round completed in March led by Spice Expeditions, which included $20 million in debt provided by Architect Capital. Several U.S. donor funds and Latin American investment institutions participated.Founded in 2022, Cashea provides "buy now, pay later" services for Venezuelan consumers who have long been credit-constrained. Users can make a down payment via the app or by scanning a code offline and then pay in interest-free installments. The company claims to have processed over 110 million transactions, serving more than 10 million accounts, with partnerships reaching 40,000 merchants. The new funds will be used to expand credit products and support post-disaster reconstruction.

According to a report by businesswire, the stablecoin and digital asset financial infrastructure service provider Cordant announced the completion of an $8 million seed round financing, led by Motive Partners and Oak HC/FT, with participation from Bankless VC, FJ Labs, SignalFire, Quona, Next Stage, Selah Ventures, Flatironx, Nascent Ventures, Silvercircle Ventures, and Generative Ventures. The new funds will support its introduction of new payment networks and AI automation tools.Cordant is collaborating with financial institutions on product co-development, covering banking, payments, embedded finance, cross-border transactions, stablecoins, and digital assets. Among them, the Latin American digital asset and payment platform Bitso and the blockchain infrastructure company Paxos are both participating as investors and design partners.

According to Dawn, the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) of Pakistan has established a virtual currency investigation department within the newly launched National Command and Control Center (NC3), focusing on combating money laundering and terrorist financing using virtual assets.Officials responsible for the counter-terrorism department stated that this department will work in conjunction with the newly established Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) to specifically investigate criminal activities related to crypto assets, and recommend that the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA) and the Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF) set up similar units to address the use of crypto assets in cybercrime and drug trafficking.The FIA has also integrated functions such as anti-money laundering, border entry and exit monitoring, human trafficking, and smuggling investigations within the NC3, and is promoting new regulations and personnel expansion to shorten case processing times and enhance law enforcement coordination efficiency.