funding

According to an official tweet from Gaea Foundation, the decentralized AI ecosystem project GAEA announced the completion of a $3.6 million strategic round of financing on September 19, with investors including MH Venture, CGV FOF, K24 Ventures, and M2M Capital. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of GAEA's Emotional Layer, expand the global community, and promote the implementation of AI entities with emotional perception capabilities.According to the official introduction, GAEA is committed to building a decentralized ecosystem that connects humans, AI entities, data, and computing resources, with the number of users in the ecosystem exceeding 850,000.

According to BBX data, the global capital markets revealed the latest developments in direct investment in Bitcoin and the performance of brokerage digital asset businesses yesterday. The core information is as follows:Japan Bitcoin Industry has completed a capital increase of 840 million yen, fully paid in physical Bitcoin: The Web3 infrastructure developer Japan Bitcoin Industry announced the implementation of a third-party share allocation capital increase, successfully issuing shares to two institutions, Fulgur LLC and ANAP Lightning Capital (ALC), raising a total of 840 million yen (approximately 5.07 million USD). Notably, this capital increase will be fully funded in physical Bitcoin, with on-chain delivery expected to be completed on November 2. At the same time, the company signed a basic agreement for cooperation in Lightning Network routing business with ALC, which will use the Bitcoin held by ALC as the underlying liquidity for the company's operational channels. The raised funds will be specifically used for the research and development of the infrastructure "aurora" (supporting enterprises to access Lightning payments via API), talent recruitment, and local routing network infrastructure.Robinhood (NASDAQ: $HOOD) Q3 crypto revenue plummets 55%, causing overall profits to fall short of expectations: American internet brokerage giant Robinhood released its third-quarter financial report. The data shows that due to a slowdown in cryptocurrency trading activity and increased operating expenses, overshadowing its strong performance in options and prediction markets, the quarterly profits fell below Wall Street expectations. In the third quarter, its cryptocurrency trading revenue decreased significantly by 55% year-on-year to 120 million USD. Although options trading revenue grew by 31% and event contract revenue surged more than sixfold, driving overall trading revenue up 19% year-on-year to 867 million USD, total operating expenses also increased by 16% year-on-year to 739 million USD. The company's earnings per share for the quarter were 0.51 USD, falling short of analysts' expectations of 0.55 USD, leading to a drop of over 7% in its stock price in after-hours trading.

The funding scale of the Zcash development grant program continues to expand, with the current net funding estimated at approximately 125 million USD, far exceeding current expenditure needs. Sean Bowe, co-founder of Zcash and current head of Tachyon, has proposed a draft suggesting the termination of the current 8% block reward allocated to ZCG in a future network upgrade.There are currently four proposals in the community regarding the development funding mechanism, which involve terminating ZCG grants, canceling the entire development fund grant mechanism, or gradually reducing the grant proportion to zero. Supporters believe that the current mechanism allows funds to accumulate as the price of ZEC rises, but ZCG is not directly controlled by holders; opponents worry that cutting development funds without alternative solutions may impact the subsequent development and maintenance of the protocol. All proposals are still in the discussion stage and have not yet been finalized.

According to Fortune, financial AI startup Casap announced on Wednesday that it has completed a $56 million Series B funding round, led by Base10 Partners, with Synchrony and Experian participating as strategic investors. The company's total funding has reached $90 million.Founded in 2023, Casap's AI tools are used to help banks and credit card companies handle disputes and chargebacks. According to the company, its clients have reduced first-party fraud losses by up to 51%, with chargeback win rates increasing to 96%, compared to the industry average of 60%; the average dispute resolution time has been shortened to 8 days, while traditional methods can take up to 90 days. The company did not disclose the valuation for this round.

The data analysis platform Hex completed a $100 million financing round at a valuation of $1.2 billion, led by Peak XV and 137 Ventures, with participation from Amplify, Avra, a16z, Redpoint, Sequoia, and Zero Prime.

AI wealth management platform Nevis announced the completion of a $70 million Series B financing round. This round was led by EQT Ventures, with new investors including Charles Schwab and QuantumLight (founded by Revolut founder Nik Storonsky), while existing investors such as Sequoia Capital, ICONIQ Capital, and Ribbit Capital also increased their investments.Nevis has raised a total of $110 million over the past two years. In the past 12 months, its revenue has grown more than 25 times, and the platform's asset scale has increased from $50 billion to over $70 billion. The company has partnered with more than 10 RIAs (Registered Investment Advisors) including Focus Financial Partners. The new funds will be used to expand the team and develop new products.

At the same time, the company signed a basic cooperation agreement for lightning network routing business with ALC, using the BTC held by ALC as the liquidity for the channels operated by the company, jointly building local routing infrastructure in Japan. The raised funds will be used to pay for infrastructure development, talent recruitment, routing business, and research and development, with a focus on promoting the lightning payment service "aurora" that can be accessed through the existing payment systems of merchants via API.

Initia officially stated that, with the support of the Initia Foundation, the 1:1 asset backing of the affected assets in the security incident on October 23 will be fully restored when the chain resumes operation.The Initia Foundation has approved funding to cover the reserve shortfall of Noble USDC, WETH, and AUSD0 used as collateral for iUSD, involving up to 1.08 million USDC, 105 ETH, and 1.4 million AUSD0 respectively. The specific amounts still need to be verified and receive final transfer approval.

According to Crunchbase data, global venture capital investment in robotics startups reached $9.9 billion in the third quarter of 2026, more than doubling from $4.3 billion in the third quarter of 2025, with a year-on-year growth of approximately 185%. In the first three quarters of 2026, financing in the robotics sector grew by about 185% year-on-year, with several consecutive quarters approaching or exceeding $10 billion.This year's robotics financing is largely concentrated in China and the United States, with China receiving $13.2 billion and the United States $12.1 billion, while Germany ranks third with $1.7 billion. The largest financing in China includes $900 million for Guangzhou Xiaopeng Robotics and $736 million in Series C funding for Shenzhen AI² Robotics. In the United States, Travis Kalanick's Atoms and Pittsburgh's Skild AI both completed billion-dollar financing, with Skild AI raising $1.4 billion for its robotics foundation model Skild Brain. Germany's Neura Robotics raised $1.4 billion for cognitive robotics.

Spicenet, an on-chain financial brokerage network, announced the completion of a $5 million Series A funding round, led by dao5, with participation from Babylon and Astrarizon. Combined with the previous $3 million seed round co-led by Hack VC and Magnus Capital, the total funding amount reaches $8 million.The new funds will be used to launch the cross-platform margin account Spice Edge, issue the ecosystem token SPICE, and inject initial liquidity into network products. Spicenet is built on a dedicated L1 settlement layer supported by Celestia, and its core products also include the cross-chain one-click interaction protocol Spice Flow, as well as the in-development tokenized stock consumer application Spice Stocks.

HIVE Digital Technologies, a Bitcoin mining company, announced that its subsidiary BUZZ Alpha Cloud has signed a fixed-rate credit agreement with institutional lenders for approximately $129 million, with an annual interest rate of 9.0% and a term of three years, with a loan-to-value ratio of about 80%.The financing will be used to purchase an AI GPU cluster and related infrastructure, including the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 system, to fulfill a three-year sovereign AI customer contract signed with Cohere. The CEO of HIVE stated that this financing corresponds to the procurement of 2,303 NVIDIA GB200 GPUs worth approximately $165 million, with the related equity contribution coming from the company's 0% convertible bonds issued earlier this year. The company expects GPU deliveries to take place by the end of the fourth quarter of 2026.

According to Business Insider, AI computing infrastructure startup Hyperbolic has completed a $30 million A-1 round of financing, led by Walden Catalyst, co-founded by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and former Samsung President Young Sohn, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, and others.

The developer tools AI visibility and usability platform AgentRel announced on X the completion of a $1.3 million financing round, with investors Y Combinator and Broom Ventures. The funds will be used to build AgentRel.The announcement stated that AgentRel helps developer tool companies see whether ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini would recommend their products or competitors' products, and identifies the difficult points users encounter when using Claude Code. The announcement also mentioned that Profound, Peec, and most other AI visibility tools primarily measure volume, while AgentRel provides accurate data and helps users take action based on that.

According to Bloomberg, robotics AI software developer Physical Intelligence is negotiating at least $1 billion in financing, with a valuation expected to nearly double to about $20 billion. Existing investors Avenir and Lux Capital are in talks to lead the investment. Earlier this year, Physical Intelligence raised funds at a valuation of $11.5 billion, and insiders say the company currently has no revenue.Physical Intelligence was founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers and scholars from Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Investors include CapitalG, a subsidiary of Alphabet, Jeff Bezos, and Thrive Capital. The company develops AI software that can run on various third-party hardware and supports multiple robotic actions. Recent job postings indicate that employees will train robots to perform daily household tasks. Earlier this month, Physical Intelligence opened access to its latest robot model for external developers for fine-tuning, which is still in the testing phase.

The prediction market platform Myriad announced that due to the administrator wallet being compromised, 10 prediction markets have been voided. According to the official statement, the holders on both sides of the affected markets will receive automatic refunds calculated at the price before the attack, but bonuses already received will be deducted.Myriad is a prediction market platform that allows users to bet on the outcomes of real-world events. After the administrator wallet was compromised, the platform decided to void the related markets and promised automatic refunds to the holders. The refunds will be calculated based on the price before the attack, and bonuses already received will be deducted from the refunds.

According to TechCrunch, Nvidia participated in a $14 million Series B funding round for the Indian startup Simplismart. This round was led by Dallas Venture Capital, with participation from Accel, Shastra VC, and Micromax, valuing the four-year-old company at approximately $100 million (including the new funding).Simplismart claims that its software sits between AI models and computational infrastructure, automatically adjusting model deployment and management to optimize response speed, request handling capacity, and computational consumption, helping clients make better use of existing GPU resources. The company stated that its software helped the AI video generation platform InVideo reduce GPU service costs by 56%. Simplismart's CEO Amritanshu Jain told TechCrunch that the company's annualized revenue run rate has grown 14 times in the past six months, reaching a double-digit million amount. This figure is based on recent customer usage rather than contract recurring revenue and does not include revenue passed on to infrastructure providers; the U.S. contributes more than half of the revenue, although it has a larger number of clients in India.

The AI chip trading market and software startup Hyperbolic announced the completion of a $30 million A-1 round of financing, led by Walden Catalyst, with participation from Dell Technologies Capital, General Catalyst, Vista Equity Partners, and Cambium Capital. Hyperbolic has raised a total of $50 million to date.

According to reports from Lei Feng Network · Whale Rhino, the AI prediction engine company Prophetlab has completed tens of millions in seed round financing, jointly invested by institutions including Ivy Capital. The company was established less than four months ago, and its prediction engine, Prophet Engine, has topped the overall list of FutureX released by ByteDance Seed, receiving millions in commercial orders.Prophetlab's early project utilized AI large models to predict World Cup outcomes, successfully forecasting the final results and the top four teams, with some models achieving an accuracy rate of about 75%. The team consists of AI PhDs and FinTech Masters from domestic and international universities. Founding members have participated in the training of billion-scale models such as Alibaba's Qianwen and Tencent's Hunyuan, and have collaborated with Professor Yan Junchi's team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in industry-academia-research cooperation. The company is about to release the Investor's Last Exam list, focusing on commercial predictions.

Asset management company Grayscale reported that the privacy cryptocurrency Zcash celebrates its tenth anniversary this week. The report states that Zcash's ability to continuously innovate partly stems from allocating 20% of block rewards for developer funding, with the protocol evolving from the Sprout pool to Sapling and Orchard.Launched in 2026, the Ironwood pool adds quantum-resistant addresses and formal verification to address code vulnerabilities. Grayscale expressed hope and expectation that Zcash will continue to expand transaction capacity and prepare for post-quantum era and AI-driven cybersecurity risks, which may require ongoing funding from multiple parties and efficient allocation.

Anthropic has officially submitted its IPO application. According to its S-1 cash flow statement disclosed in the prospectus, the company has raised approximately $140 billion in cash through preferred stock, convertible bonds, and SAFE agreements from 2023 to the first half of 2026, of which $110 billion was raised in the first half of 2026, including $65.2 billion in Series H financing.As of June 30, 2026, Anthropic's remaining cash includes $112.4 billion in cash and cash equivalents and $19.3 billion in short-term investments, totaling approximately $132 billion, along with an additional $2.5 billion in restricted cash. Other financing channels include a $15 billion undrawn revolving credit facility expanded in September 2026, and up to $77 billion in partner note financing, of which $20 billion from Google, $15 billion from Amazon linked to computing milestones, and $42 billion from Broadcom solely for lease payments, with IPO proceeds to be added on top of this.Accordingly, Anthropic's cash holdings are higher than those of tech giants like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, second only to Google's parent company Alphabet's $242 billion. Its projected expenditure report also shows that starting from December 2026, it has committed approximately $37 billion annually for computing power solely to SpaceXAI, with total computing power commitments estimated at around $780 billion to $810 billion.