venture

MEXC Ventures has announced its support for Alpha Arena’s expansion into APAC, serving as Main Sponsor of Alpha Arena S03 alongside Co host TRIV. Following successful editions in Amsterdam and Berlin, the global esports-inspired live trading tournament will make its APAC debut with the Bali Grand Final on August 20, 2026, during Coinfest week. More than 50 traders from three participating markets are expected to compete for a $100,000 prize pool. Through live trading competition, community engagement, and ecosystem collaboration, Alpha Arena S03 aims to bring together traders, creators, and Web3 communities across the region.

According to Techcrunch, New York AI detection startup Pangram announced the completion of a $9 million financing round, led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Haystack, ScOp, Script Capital, and Cadenza.Pangram also released the next-generation AI text detection model Pangram 4 and the AI image detection model Pangram Image, with the text detection accuracy exceeding 99%, capable of identifying AI-assisted writing, mixed human-machine content, and text generated by AI impersonation programs; the image detection model is currently in research preview stage, based on pixel-level distribution analysis, capable of identifying AI-generated images across models and detecting AI images present in real photographs.

According to the New York Daily, the decentralized data infrastructure project Permacast based on Permaweb announced the completion of its Series A funding round on January 15, 2025, raising over $5 million. Combined with the previously completed seed round and Pre-A round, the total funding raised by the project has reached $8.9 million.This round of financing received support from several leading Web3 funds, technology investment institutions, and strategic angel investors. Seed round investors include OKX Ventures, Big Brain Holdings, ChainVision, Foresight Research, and Digital Humanism (DRF); Pre-A round investors include ClearingPoint, 7 O'Clock Capital, Cipholio Ventures, SilverFox Foundation, and a number of private investors; Series A round investors include CoinSummer, angel investor Tomasz Boryniec, Waterwood Investment (Tsinghua), Scorpio VC, and a number of private investors.Permacast stated that as AI models reshape the way information is created and utilized, the demand for trustworthy, permanent, and verifiable data infrastructure is growing. The new funds will be used to accelerate protocol development, expand decentralized network infrastructure, strengthen ecological cooperation, and expand the engineering and product teams. The team stated that a permanent, verifiable, and open data network will become the foundational infrastructure for future intelligent applications.

According to the latest weekly report from Gate Ventures, global risk assets are under pressure due to adjustments in technology stocks, fluctuations in the energy market, and changes in macro expectations, with the cryptocurrency market showing a volatile recovery trend. BTC rose 1.1% over the week, ETH rose 4.4%, pushing the ETH/BTC ratio up by 2.2%, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies increased by 1.03%. In terms of capital flow, the net inflow for spot BTC ETFs was only $33.8 million for the week, the lowest level since their launch; the net inflow for spot ETH ETFs during the same period was $103.9 million, indicating an improvement in market sentiment, with the Fear and Greed Index rising to 30, but still in the "fear" range. Meanwhile, the price of STRC under Strategy remained around $86, trading below par for the ninth consecutive week, with the institutional holding ratio continuing to increase, and the market is paying attention to its subsequent performance.In terms of industry development, stablecoin payments and the construction of blockchain financial infrastructure are continuing to advance. KB Kookmin Bank is collaborating with Kinexys, a subsidiary of JPMorgan, to explore blockchain-based cross-border payment services, further promoting traditional financial institutions' layout in on-chain payment scenarios; Kakao and Circle are exploring the payment infrastructure for a Korean won stablecoin, accelerating the application exploration of stablecoins in retail payments and cross-border settlements. In terms of investment and financing, a total of 8 financing transactions were completed last week, with a disclosed total financing amount of $196.5 million, among which the financing scale in the infrastructure sector was the highest, reaching $193 million, and the stablecoin clearing infrastructure project Augustus completed $180 million in financing. Overall, the market's short-term risk appetite remains cautious, but stablecoin payments, on-chain clearing, and financial infrastructure construction continue to attract capital attention.

According to PR Newswire, the on-chain execution infrastructure company Birdai Labs announced the completion of a $4 million seed round financing, led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Metalayer Ventures and The Venture Dept.Birdai Labs focuses on providing measurement, verification, and optimization infrastructure for transaction execution quality on high-performance public chains, aiming to reduce value loss between orders and executions caused by sorting and propagation, and to return more value to traders and market makers. The company's team comes from traditional financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton and Citadel, and is expanding its senior engineering and quantitative research team to adapt to on-chain execution competition under a multi-proposer architecture, and to provide verifiable fairness and transparency execution standards for future institutional participation in the digital asset market.

According to Ventureburn, AI robotics company Enigma has completed a $71 million seed round financing, co-led by Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital, with participation from Conviction Partners and individual investors in the AI field such as OpenAI, Anthropic, DeepMind, xAI, Cognition, and Wiz.The company was founded 11 months ago, and this round is one of the largest seed rounds in the physical AI sector. The funds will be used to expand the research and engineering team, enhance computing infrastructure, and increase real-world deployments. Enigma has developed over 100 self-developed robotic systems, operating in California and Israel, and has opened remote interaction to collect training data. The company believes that the biggest barrier to the widespread adoption of robots is the way humans interact with them, and its platform adopts a hardware-agnostic strategy that can adapt to robotic devices from different manufacturers.

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.

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 Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, influenced by the escalation of geopolitical risks and changes in the AI competitive landscape, all three major U.S. stock indices fell last week, energy prices rose significantly, and the trends of safe-haven assets like gold and U.S. Treasuries diverged. The cryptocurrency market continued its structural trend, with Bitcoin and Ethereum rising by 1.5% and 3.6%, respectively, while both spot BTC and ETH ETFs maintained net inflows.In terms of industry development, regulation and real-world applications continued to be the focus this week. Japanese convenience store giant Lawson, in collaboration with Netstars, is advancing a stablecoin payment pilot, further promoting the use of stablecoins in everyday consumption scenarios; South Korea plans to officially incorporate digital assets into its national asset management framework and explore the tokenization of government bonds and state-owned assets, with the construction of RWA infrastructure continuing to accelerate. In Europe, after the transition period of MiCA ended, the total number of licensed institutions increased to 294, although the number of new licenses has slowed down, institutional participation remains strong.In terms of investment and financing, the cryptocurrency industry recorded a total of 16 financing events last week, highly concentrated in the infrastructure sector: among them, Alpaca completed a $135 million financing to enhance tokenized securities and AI financial infrastructure; Flex completed a $70 million financing to further expand its stablecoin cross-border payment network, continuously confirming the capital market's long-term optimism towards digital financial infrastructure. Gate Ventures believes that as the global regulatory framework gradually improves and the integration of traditional finance and blockchain deepens, the digital asset ecosystem is expected to enter a more mature and diverse development stage.

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 GlobeNewswire, AI security startup Neo announced the completion of a $100 million financing round, led by venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) and Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures.It is reported that the company positions itself as an "Agentic Software Control" company, dedicated to building a real-time control layer for enterprises, helping security operations teams (SecOps) manage and protect the rapidly proliferating AI agents, AI applications, browsers, identity systems, and intelligent capabilities in traditional software. The new funds will be used to expand the engineering and marketing teams and accelerate the expansion of enterprise customers.

According to TechFundingNews, Nvidia's venture capital division NVentures previously invested approximately $196 million in the UK fintech company Revolut.A confirmation statement disclosed by the UK Companies House shows that a shareholder entity suspected to belong to NVentures LLC holds about 141,834 shares of Revolut. Based on the issuance price disclosed in this round of financing by Revolut, this portion of shares is valued at approximately $195.9 million.Previously, neither Nvidia nor Revolut publicly disclosed the specific investment amount and shareholding scale of NVentures in the company. The exposure of this document indicates that Nvidia is further positioning itself in the fintech sector through strategic investments.Founded in 2015, Revolut is one of Europe's leading digital banking platforms, covering areas such as payments, foreign exchange, investment, and cryptocurrency services. In recent years, Nvidia has continuously invested in AI, fintech, and next-generation internet infrastructure companies through NVentures, and this investment in Revolut is also seen as part of its expansion into the AI and digital finance ecosystem.

According to CNBC, AI infrastructure startup Fireworks AI announced the completion of a $1.5 billion financing round, with the company's valuation reaching $17.5 billion. The company had previously received support from NVIDIA and primarily provides cloud-based services for open-source AI model deployment, helping businesses deploy artificial intelligence applications at a lower cost.This round of financing was led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV, with participation from institutions such as NVIDIA, Evantic, and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Currently, Fireworks processes approximately 400 trillion AI tokens daily. The company's clients include businesses such as Elastic, GitLab, and MongoDB. Previously, more than half of its revenue came from the AI programming tool Cursor, but the client base has now become more diversified.

Miami-based payment infrastructure startup Cyclops announced the completion of a $20 million Series A funding round, led by Nava Ventures, with participation from Castle Island Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Circle, Lasagna Ventures, and GPT Ventures.

According to official news, Coinvestor Ventures announced a strategic investment in the decentralized on-chain trading platform Universe Pro.It is reported that Universe Pro is an on-chain trading platform powered by the UNAI engine. The platform aims to optimize and enhance users' capital efficiency by integrating core functions such as MEV (Maximum Extractable Value), market-making scheduling, and smart routing.

According to Bloomberg, Brinc, an AI drone company supported by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, announced the completion of a $125 million financing round, led by existing investor Motorola Solutions, with participation from Index Ventures and previous investors such as Dylan Field.It is reported that the company focuses on applying AI-based drone technology in the field of public safety, including replacing some high-risk manual response tasks.

According to Techcrunch, Nous Research, the developer of the open-source agent Hermes, is finalizing a new round of financing, expected to be led by Robot Ventures, with participation from institutions like USV. The company's valuation is approximately $1.5 billion. Sources indicate that the scale of this round of financing is at least $75 million.Its core product, Hermes, as an open-source local AI agent, has accumulated 214,000 stars and nearly 40,000 forks on the GitHub platform. It supports users in deploying and running locally on personal computers and virtual servers, with autonomous execution capabilities such as web retrieval and code generation.

According to Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, the global market continued to be influenced by high interest rate expectations and geopolitical factors last week, with the cryptocurrency market overall maintaining volatility. BTC rose 0.2% over the week, ETH increased by 1.2%, and market sentiment saw a slight recovery. Meanwhile, BTC spot ETFs ended eight consecutive weeks of net outflows, recording a net inflow of approximately $197 million, and ETH spot ETFs also resumed net inflows, with institutional allocation demand showing marginal improvement.On the industry front, traditional financial institutions are continuing to accelerate the construction of on-chain infrastructure. Swift officially launched a blockchain-based shared ledger and partnered with 17 global banks to initiate a tokenized deposit pilot; fintech platform Toss is collaborating with Optimism to advance the infrastructure development for the Korean won stablecoin; Robinhood Chain, which launched only two weeks ago, has surpassed a total locked value (TVL) of $132 million.In terms of investment and financing, a total of 8 financing deals were disclosed last week, amounting to $381 million, with the infrastructure (Infra) sector dominating. Prime Intellect completed a $130 million financing round to accelerate the construction of enterprise-level AI infrastructure; Gauntlet received a $125 million strategic investment from Japan's SBI Holdings to further expand its institutional-level DeFi treasury business. Gate Ventures believes that stablecoins, on-chain finance, and institutional-level infrastructure are continuing to become important development directions for the industry, with institutional capital further increasing its investment in digital asset infrastructure.

2U2.ai announced the completion of a new round of strategic financing, with the financing amount being 3 million USD and the project valuation reaching 100 million USD. This round of financing was led by Vega Venture, with participation from Archer Capital, UZ Capital, and Infinite Alliance.This round of financing will be used to further improve the MemeLayer infrastructure of 2U2.ai, continuously expand ecological cooperation, and promote the large-scale application of AI Meme in content creation, community communication, and attention distribution scenarios.2U2.ai is building an AI-driven MemeLayer for Web3, creating a Meme content network that connects creators, communities, and project parties through meme generation, remixing, distribution, and incentive mechanisms. Currently, the platform has launched the Meme Arms Race points system, where users can earn points by creating, sharing, and disseminating meme content, and participate in subsequent ecological incentives of the platform.