Financing Weekly Report | 19 public funding events. Tether-focused blockchain Stable completes $28 million seed round, led by Bitfinex and Hack VC.
The investment and financing market continues to recover, with funds flowing into AI, infrastructure, CeFI and DeFi fields; CEA Industries, 10X Capital, Mill City Ventures and Upexi have all completed US$500 million in financing and will establish BNB, Sui and Sol treasuries respectively.
Highlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 19 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (July 28-August 3), with a total funding amount exceeding US$219 million. In addition, the total amount of financing for listed companies’ crypto asset reserves exceeded US$1.775 billion. An overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced four investment and financing events, among which the RWAiFi project GAIB completed a $10 million financing, led by Amber Group;
- The Web3 gaming track announced one investment and financing event, among which the Web3 fantasy football game Football.Fun completed a $2 million financing;
- The Web3+AI track announced four investment and financing events, among which the AI project Billions completed a $30 million financing round, with participation from Polychain, Coinbase Ventures and others;
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced six investment and financing events, including Tether-focused blockchain Stable, which completed a $28 million seed round led by Bitfinex and Hack VC.
- The centralized finance sector announced four investment and financing events, including Yuanbi Technology’s US$40 million Series A2 financing round, led by ZhongAn International and others;
- In other aspects, 7 listed companies completed financing to establish crypto treasuries, among which CEA Industries and 10X Capital, supported by YZi Labs, raised $500 million in private placements to establish BNB treasuries.
DeFi
RWAiFi project GAIB completes $10 million financing, led by Amber Group
GAIB, a RWAiFi project, has secured $10 million in funding, led by Amber Group. The funds will be used to tokenize the platform’s GPU assets and drive the development of the on-chain AI economy. By 2025, GAIB had attracted $28 million in deposits and partnered with DeFi protocols Morpho and Pendle. The platform supports access to the AI economy through synthetic dollars using AID and earns returns through staking AID (sAID). GAIB previously raised $5 million in pre-seed funding, led by Hack VC .
TON Ecosystem STON.fi Completes $9.5 Million Series A Funding, Led by Ribbit Capital and CoinFund
STON.fi, a leading decentralized exchange on the TON blockchain, has completed a $9.5 million Series A funding round led by Ribbit Capital and CoinFund. The funds will be used to develop centralized liquidity pools, cross-chain functionality, and community governance, promoting bridgeless cross-chain exchange and expanding the DeFi ecosystem. Since its launch in 2022, STON.fi has achieved cumulative trading volume exceeding $6 billion.
Pear Protocol, a cryptocurrency trading platform, completes $4.1 million in strategic financing
Pear Protocol, a cryptocurrency pairs trading platform, announced the completion of a $4.1 million strategic funding round led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Compound VC, Florin Digital, and Sigil Fund. The funding will be used to expand its institutional-grade product suite, including the development of vaults and APIs on the HyperEVM and the relaunch of a more liquid spot token on the Hyperliquid spot order book. The platform has natively integrated with the Hyperliquid perpetual contract order book, enabling one-click execution of pairs trades and supporting advanced features such as ratio-based stop-loss and take-profit strategies and TWAP execution.
Kuvi.ai, an AI-driven cryptocurrency trading platform, announced the completion of a $700,000 seed round of financing, led by Moon Pursuit Capital, with participation from Transform Ventures investor Michael Terpin and Web3 investor Dennis Liu, bringing the valuation to $30 million. The company aims to use the new funds to support its message-based trading platform, simplifying the cryptocurrency trading interface in a conversational manner.
Web3 Games
Web3 role-playing game Aria raises $5 million
Aria (ARIA), the Web3 role-playing game, announced it has successfully raised $5 million in its latest funding round. The round was led by Folius Ventures, The Spartan Group, and Beam FDN, with participation from Animoca Brands, Galaxy, and others.
AI
Billions, an AI project, announced the completion of a $30 million funding round to build the first universal human-AI network. The funding round was backed by leading crypto and AI infrastructure investors including Polychain, Coinbase Ventures, Polygon, LibertyCity Ventures, and BITKRAFT Ventures. Billions advocates for resolving the internet’s trust issues through verifiable identity, enabling users to prove their authenticity without exposing their private data and creating a safer environment for human-AI interaction. This funding will be used to build the first universal human-AI interaction network. Based on zero-knowledge proof technology, the platform is committed to providing a scalable and secure authentication mechanism to promote trusted interaction between humans and AI.
Manifold, a decentralized AI infrastructure company, announced it has secured $10.5 million in Series A funding to accelerate the development of its decentralized AI cloud platform, Targon. The round was led by OSS Capital, with participation from prominent investors including Digital Currency Group, Tobias Lütke, Ram Shriram, Zachary Smith, Jacob Steeves, Ala Shaabana, and Logan Kilpatrick.
ARO Network secures $2.1 million in funding to advance decentralized edge cloud
ARO Network recently secured $2.1 million in pre-seed funding to accelerate the development of its decentralized edge cloud platform, designed for peer-to-peer content delivery and AI computing. This round was led by NoLimit Holdings and Dispersion Capital, with participation from Escape Velocity, Maelstrom, and several strategic angel investors. ARO Network transforms idle internet bandwidth and computing power into a scalable P2P content delivery network, dedicated to serving users globally with low latency and low costs. The network is actively promoting integration with ecosystems such as EigenLayer, Base, and IoTex.
Virtuals-based AI agent Billy Bets secures $1 million in funding
Virtuals-based AI agent Billy Bets recently completed $1 million in financing, with investors including Coinbase Ventures, Virtuals Ventures and Contango Digital Assets.
OpenAI completes $8.3 billion in financing, with a valuation of $300 billion
According to a report by Jinshi.com citing The New York Times, OpenAI has raised $8.3 billion at a valuation of $300 billion. OpenAI plans to secure $40 billion in funding by 2025.
( Not included in this issue’s weekly financing statistics)
Infrastructure & Tools
Tether-focused blockchain Stable completes $28 million seed round led by Bitfinex and Hack VC
Stable, a new blockchain project built around Tether’s USDT, announced the completion of a $28 million seed funding round led by Bitfinex and Hack VC. Other backers include Franklin Templeton, Castle Island Ventures, and KuCoin Ventures, as well as angel investors such as Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and Braintree founder Bryan Johnson. The Stable blockchain aims to use USDT as the base gas token to build a fast, low-cost, and stable payment network. Its roadmap consists of three phases: the first phase will enable USDT gas payments and sub-second block confirmations; the second phase will provide block space guarantees for enterprise-level payments; and the third phase will focus on developer tools and performance upgrades.
Blockchain startup Subzero Labs completes $20 million seed round led by Pantera Capital
Blockchain startup Subzero Labs has secured $20 million in seed funding led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Variant, Coinbase Ventures, and Susquehanna’s crypto arm. The company is developing the Rialo blockchain, a real-world blockchain designed to transcend the current limitations of crypto technology, which primarily serves financial speculation. Co-founder Ade Adepoju, formerly an engineer at Mysten Labs (where he worked on the Sui blockchain), aims to provide non-crypto developers with a native solution for integrating external data (such as FICO credit scores) on-chain, without relying on oracles. The 20-member team raised funding in a combination of equity and token subscription rights. The valuation was not disclosed.
Falcon Finance secures $10 million strategic investment from World Liberty Financial
Falcon announced Wednesday that World Liberty Financial, a Trump-linked crypto venture, has made a $10 million strategic investment in Falcon Finance, a digital token infrastructure platform. The funding will accelerate its operations to allow for seamless conversions between its stablecoin and another stablecoin backed by World Liberty. The Falcon USD stablecoin, or USDf, reportedly reached $1 billion in circulation on Tuesday.
Due, a London-based borderless payments startup, announced the completion of a $7.3 million seed round and the official launch of its global stablecoin payments API. The round was led by Speedinvest, with participation from Semantic, Fabric Ventures, Strobe Ventures, Polymorphic Capital, and other prominent investors. The new funds will be used to expand the API platform, helping businesses achieve faster, lower-cost, and more inclusive cross-border payments.
Crypto startup TACEO completes $5.5 million seed round, with participation from a16z and CSX
Austrian crypto startup TACEO has secured $5.5 million in seed funding, led by Archetype VC, with participation from a16z CSX, Cyber.Fund, a_capital, and Polymorphic Capital. The new funds will be used to enhance infrastructure performance and developer tools, with a focus on expanding privacy-compliant applications in finance, AI, and stablecoins. The company’s core technology, “Private Shared State,” enables multi-party collaborative computation on encrypted data and has successfully supported biometric authentication for 14 million users of Sam Altman’s World ID project. This technology integrates multi-party computation (MPC) and coSNARKs zero-knowledge proofs to verify computational accuracy without exposing the original data.
Bitcoin-native dApp infrastructure Midl completes $2.4 million seed round
Midl, a Bitcoin-native dApp infrastructure, announced the completion of a $2.4 million seed round led by Draper Associates, with participation from Draper Dragon. The project aims to build a native smart contract execution environment on the Bitcoin mainnet, enabling decentralized applications to run without relying on sidechains or cross-chain bridges. Midl is currently in the testnet phase, with the mainnet expected to launch soon. Several early-stage DeFi protocols have already launched on testnet, with over 20 projects in various stages of deployment.
other
Crypto asset reserves: ( not included in this issue’s financing weekly report statistics )
Mill City Ventures Announces $500 Million in Equity Financing to Advance SUI’s Financial Strategy
Mill City Ventures III, Ltd. (NASDAQ: MCVT), a non-bank lender and finance company, announced today that it has signed an equity facility agreement with AGP/Alliance Global Partners, an investor, which allows Mill City to sell up to $500 million of the company’s common stock at its discretion, subject to certain restrictions and closing conditions. The proceeds from the equity facility, excluding a commitment fee, will be used to advance the company’s SUI finance strategy.
Nasdaq-listed company Upexi (NASDAQ: UPXI) has signed an equity financing facility agreement with AGP/Alliance Global Partners, under which Upexi may sell up to $500 million of its common stock at its discretion, subject to certain restrictions and closing conditions. The company stated that it will use the proceeds from the equity financing facility for general corporate purposes and to advance its Solana asset reserve strategy. The equity financing facility structure enables Upexi to access the capital markets at its own discretion without the need for an immediate financing. Such agreements typically allow companies to sell shares over a period of time, depending on market conditions and funding needs.
CEA Industries and 10X Capital announced a $500 million private placement financing with the support of YZi Labs to establish a BNB treasury. The two institutions will expand the scale of PIPE issuance. More than 140 subscribers participated in this issuance. In addition to YZi Labs, there are also Pantera Capital, Arche Capital, GSR, Borderless, Arrington Capital, Blockchain.com, Hypersphere Capital, Kenetic and other institutions.
Fundamental Global Completes $200 Million Private Placement and Launches ETH Reserve Program
Fundamental Global announced the completion of a $200 million private placement, which will be used to purchase ETH as a primary reserve asset for its treasury and launch its Ethereum treasury strategy. The company will be renamed FG Nexus Inc., with the new stock ticker expected to launch on August 1st. Strategic investors include Galaxy Digital, Kraken, and DCG, with Galaxy assisting in the management of the Ethereum treasury. The company stated its commitment to promoting the adoption of Ethereum in the global financial system while offering staking rewards and opportunities for tokenizing real-world assets.
Nasdaq-listed Antelope Enterprise announced it has signed a securities purchase agreement with Streeterville Capital to raise $50 million in proceeds, specifically for the purchase of Bitcoin. Streeterville Capital will provide the company with funds in installments over a period of up to 24 months, which AEHL will use to gradually acquire Bitcoin based on market conditions.
The Smarter Web Company, a London-listed technology company, announced the completion of its current subscription round, raising a total of £19.68 million at an average price of £3.25 per share. Funds are expected to be received early this week. The company plans to update the subscription progress every two weeks and plans to launch a new subscription agreement upon completion of the current round, totaling 14 million shares. The company has adopted a Bitcoin treasury policy since 2023 and currently holds a portion of its reserves in Bitcoin, viewing it as a long-term store of value and intended to enhance shareholder returns.
Vaultz Capital Closes £4.3 Million Funding and Expands Bitcoin Strategy
Vaultz Capital, a UK-listed digital asset management company, successfully raised £4.3 million through a private placement, with Aura Digital subscribing to £2.6 million. The company is currently conducting a new placement round, targeting a total of approximately £6 million. The company is accelerating the expansion of its Bitcoin reserve and infrastructure strategy, appointing Erik Benz as CEO and establishing a new Bitcoin Advisory Board.
Centralized Finance
RD Technologies, a Hong Kong-based fintech group, announced the successful completion of its Series A2 funding round, which is close to US$40 million. This round was led by ZA Global, China Harbour, Bright Venture, and Hivemind Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital China (HSG), Eternal Digital, Junshi Investments, and Guotai Junan International Private Equity Fund. RD Technologies stated that this funding will accelerate the development of its regulated stablecoin infrastructure and actively cooperate with Hong Kong’s upcoming stablecoin licensing regime. ZhongAn Bank has also signed a strategic cooperation memorandum with RD Technologies to jointly explore the compliant application of stablecoins in financial services.
Standard Chartered Bank’s crypto trading platform, Zodia Markets, has secured $18.25 million in funding led by New York-based venture capital firm Pharsalus Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, Token Bay Capital, and XVC Tech. This round of funding reduces Standard Chartered’s stake from 84% to 60%. Zodia Markets, founded in 2021, provides over-the-counter (OTC) cryptocurrency brokerage services. The new funds will be used to expand into East Asia, Latin America, and the US, as well as expand its stablecoin business. The company, with a team of approximately 50 employees, prioritizes profitability and avoids reckless expansion.
Fosun Wealth International Holdings Co., Ltd., a digital wealth management platform under Fosun, and its incubated subsidiary, Star Road Fintech Holdings Co., Ltd., announced that Star Road Technology has completed nearly US$10 million in Series A funding. Investors include the Solana Foundation, other Web3 industry organizations, and wealth management companies. It is reported that Fosun Wealth International Holdings, a subsidiary of Fosun International, recently registered trademarks in Hong Kong for “Fosun International Crypto,” “Fosun Wealth RWA,” and “Star Coin,” signaling Fosun International’s commitment to strengthening its involvement in the cryptocurrency and virtual asset industries.
Dutch crypto derivatives exchange D2X has secured €4.3 million (approximately $5 million) in strategic funding from investors including Circle Ventures, CMT Digital, Canton Ventures, Point72 Ventures, Tioga Capital, GSR, and Fortino Capital. D2X, which holds a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) license under the EU’s MiFID II framework, recently launched USD-denominated Bitcoin and Ethereum futures contracts and plans to add related options products.