# Funding Related Articles

HTX News Center provides the latest articles and in-depth analysis on "Funding", covering market trends, project updates, tech developments, and regulatory policies in the crypto industry.

zkSync Founder 'Personally Fires' Core Team, the Former Ethereum Scaling Star Fully Pivots to Serving Banks

zkSync founder Alex Gluchowski announced significant layoffs at Matter Labs, the company behind the Ethereum scaling solution, on June 17. This marks the second round of cuts in two years. The core strategic shift is the company's full focus on Prividium, a "permissioned" privacy blockchain designed specifically for regulated financial institutions like Deutsche Bank and UBS. This move represents a stark pivot from zkSync's original ethos of a public, permissionless network. Gluchowski, a self-described "freedom maximalist," is now steering the project toward a compliant, enterprise-focused model. The community reaction is divided, with many sharply questioning the use of the $458 million in total raised funds, given the ongoing layoffs. The native $ZK token has suffered heavily, trading around $0.019, down approximately 93% from its all-time high. Its value-capture mechanism appears disconnected from Matter Labs' new B2B licensing direction. This strategic turnaround is seen by some as a survival tactic in the highly competitive L2 landscape, where zkSync has faced significant user decline post its 2024 airdrop. The company is now betting on a niche, potentially more profitable market, but at the cost of alienating early supporters who believed in its decentralized promises.

marsbit06/18 03:26

zkSync Founder 'Personally Fires' Core Team, the Former Ethereum Scaling Star Fully Pivots to Serving Banks

marsbit06/18 03:26

The DeepSeek Fundraising Story

"The DeepSeek Funding Story: Insights from the $2.15 Billion Round" This article details behind-the-scenes narratives from DeepSeek's recent massive funding round. Key highlights include the legendary four-hour online investor meeting where CEO Liang Wenfeng, despite not being a charismatic speaker, impressed attendees with his focus on AGI and team stability. He emphasized the philosophy of "ordinary people doing extraordinary things" and a steadfast commitment to solely advancing intelligence. The fundraising process, initiated in April, saw initial demands for a minimum investment of 5 billion RMB, no syndication, and a pure RMB structure. These terms were later adjusted to a 1.5 billion RMB minimum to accommodate more investors. A notable absence was the lack of participation from major VC firms Sequoia China and Hillhouse Capital, despite early rumors, making IDG the only established VC in the final lineup. The investor list, while showing 10 entities, actually involved nearly 100 underlying institutions and individuals upon closer examination. Significant participants included Monolith Capital, which doubled its commitment to 3 billion RMB, and Zhenxingu Capital, an unexpected entrant. Liang Wenfeng's paramount condition for all investors was a strict agreement not to poach DeepSeek employees. The article reflects on DeepSeek's unexpected openness to funding and the mix of strategies—synergy, insight, brand alignment, and persistence—that secured investors a stake. The overarching sentiment among participants is one of pride and a shared belief in DeepSeek's potential to become a landmark Chinese company, driven by a profound sense of purpose in the AGI race.

marsbit06/18 02:06

marsbit06/18 02:06

Bezos' Third Startup Still Can't Avoid Musk

Jeff Bezos Returns as CEO for Third Venture, Still Can't Avoid Musk After stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021, Jeff Bezos has returned to the front lines as co-CEO of Prometheus, an AI startup he founded. In a recent CNBC interview, Bezos described the experience as "Type 2 fun"—exhausting but ultimately rewarding. Founded less than a year ago, Prometheus has already raised over $18 billion in two funding rounds, achieving a staggering $41 billion valuation. Prometheus aims to develop a "General Engineer AI" to accelerate the entire "invention loop"—design, simulation, testing, and manufacturing—for complex physical products like jet engines, spacecraft, and medical devices. This positions the company at the intersection of Bezos's past experiences: Amazon's platform-building scale and Blue Origin's rigorous physical engineering. This marks Bezos's third major venture, following Amazon and Blue Origin. His co-CEO is Vik Bajaj, bringing expertise from life sciences and hard tech. Bezos now dedicates most of his time to Prometheus, signaling his belief in its transformative potential. The move also comes as Bezos's space company, Blue Origin, faces challenges, including a recent test explosion delaying its New Glenn rocket. Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX achieved a record-breaking IPO, surpassing Amazon's market cap. While Musk focuses on AI for executing physical tasks (like Tesla's robots and SpaceX's engineering), Bezos is betting on AI to *invent* in the physical world. Prometheus enters a crowded industrial AI field with players like OpenAI, NVIDIA, and Tesla's Optimus. Its lofty valuation bets on the unproven but massive opportunity to become the foundational platform for engineering in the AI era—a "blue ocean" Bezos hopes to define before Musk does.

marsbit06/17 10:32

Bezos' Third Startup Still Can't Avoid Musk

marsbit06/17 10:32

Rain Valuation Approaches $20 Billion: The Battle for U-Cards Extends to Rewards Systems

Rain, a stablecoin payments infrastructure company, is shifting the competitive focus for U Cards from simple issuance to user retention and repeated usage. On June 15, Rain launched "Rain Rewards," an embedded loyalty program capability within its card-issuing infrastructure. This allows partner businesses—like fintech platforms and neobanks—to configure branded loyalty points, earning rules, redemptions, and merchant promotions directly within their card products. The system, built from the 2025 acquisition of Uptop, ensures points are only issued upon final transaction settlement, preventing liabilities from refunds. Trials, such as with Avalanche Card, reportedly boosted spending by 25% among enrolled users. Founded by Farooq Malik and Charles Yoo-Naut, Rain evolved from a tool for managing Web3 company expenses into a full-stack enterprise platform. It is a Principal Member of Visa and Mastercard, enabling partners to issue stablecoin-backed cards and wallets while leveraging traditional payment networks. Notably, the popular U Card Plasma One is issued by Rain under Visa's authority. Rain also integrates with Visa's stablecoin settlement pilot, using USDC for network settlement. Rain's rapid funding reflects growing institutional interest in stablecoin payment infrastructure. It raised a $245 million Series A in March 2025, a $58 million Series B in August 2025, and a $250 million Series C in January of this year, reaching a $19.5 billion valuation. Annualized transaction volume exceeds $3 billion, serving over 200 partners including Western Union and Nuvei. Beyond cards, Rain is expanding into programmable payments. Its June 2026 "Agent Control Layer" allows businesses to set spending rules—like merchant categories, amounts, and frequency—for AI agents before transactions occur. This positions Rain not as a single product but as an operating system for stablecoin payments, handling everything from card issuance and wallet management to rewards, on/off-ramps, and automated compliance. The goal is to enable seamless, often invisible, real-world spending of on-chain assets.

Foresight News06/17 02:02

Rain Valuation Approaches $20 Billion: The Battle for U-Cards Extends to Rewards Systems

Foresight News06/17 02:02

Do Robots Also Need Encrypted Wallets? Stablecoin Giant Tether Bets on German Company NEURA Robotics

Do Robots Need Crypto Wallets? Stablecoin Giant Tether Bets on German Firm NEURA Robotics German robotics company NEURA Robotics has secured up to $1.4 billion in what is claimed to be the largest-ever funding round in the full-stack robotics industry, valuing the company at $7 billion. The Series C round attracted major investors like Tether, Qualcomm, Amazon, NVIDIA, Bosch, and the European Investment Bank. NEURA, founded in 2019, initially focused on AI-powered collaborative robots (cobots) for industrial automation, later expanding to autonomous mobile robots, service robots, and humanoid robots. Its core strategy is evolving from a hardware manufacturer to the operator of "Neuraverse," a platform designed to enable different robots to share learned experiences and data, creating network effects. A key, crypto-focused aspect of this investment is Tether's involvement. Tether plans to integrate its open-source Wallet Development Kit (WDK) into NEURA's robot platforms. This would embed self-custody wallet functionality, allowing robots to autonomously handle payments and settlements for tasks under pre-set rules—envisioning use cases in logistics or Robotics-as-a-Service (RaaS) models. This move could position stablecoins and crypto wallets as potential "machine payment infrastructure." Additionally, the partnership will see Tether's QVAC (QuantumVerse Automatic Computer) edge-AI framework tested and deployed within Neuraverse. This aims to enable low-latency, offline-capable AI decision-making directly on robots, reducing reliance on cloud computing for critical, time-sensitive operations. The investment underscores Tether's broader ambition to expand beyond being just a stablecoin issuer into AI, energy, and digital infrastructure, with NEURA's robotics network serving as a testbed for merging crypto-based financial layers with edge-based intelligence for the future of automation.

marsbit06/16 09:14

Do Robots Also Need Encrypted Wallets? Stablecoin Giant Tether Bets on German Company NEURA Robotics

marsbit06/16 09:14

The Unfinished Tale of Jueying, DaXiao Robotics Swiftly "Raises Funds"

Following a major fundraising round involving several prominent investment institutions, DaXiao Robotics, a company backed by SenseTime, has secured hundreds of millions of US dollars in financing for the first half of 2026. This move signals SenseTime's renewed and substantial bet on "Physical AI" through embodied intelligence, following the relative underperformance of its autonomous driving unit, Jueying. While Jueying achieved mass production partnerships in the smart vehicle sector, it failed to become a pivotal player in the high-level autonomous driving landscape, leading to its gradual independence from SenseTime's core financials. DaXiao Robotics now emerges as SenseTime's next major venture into the physical world. The new funding will focus on developing a "world model" and integrated hardware-software solutions for commercial applications like retail, security, and hospitality. This ambition is significantly more complex and capital-intensive than previous projects. A world model requires understanding spatial relationships, physics, and causality to guide robots in long-term tasks, demanding immense computational resources, data, and engineering. The article highlights several challenges. First, the massive funding, while substantial, may still be strained by the high costs of R&D, data collection, and commercial deployment. Second, SenseTime itself, despite narrowing losses, continues its high-investment growth model and cannot solely bankroll this new, expensive endeavor. Third, DaXiao Robotics, led by SenseTime co-founder Wang Xiaogang, carries the technical heritage and resources of its parent company but also potentially its organizational inertia. It operates in a field increasingly dominated by agile, young technical founders. Ultimately, DaXiao Robotics represents SenseTime's attempt to secure a leading industrial position in embodied intelligence—a goal its Jueying unit did not fully achieve in autonomous driving. The new venture starts with strong capital backing, but faces the critical task of rapidly transitioning from technological narrative to sustainable commercial delivery in an early-stage, costly, and highly competitive arena.

marsbit06/15 08:41

The Unfinished Tale of Jueying, DaXiao Robotics Swiftly "Raises Funds"

marsbit06/15 08:41

From $300 Million to $10 Million: Messari Was Still Sold at a Discount

Blockworks has acquired its long-time competitor Messari for over $10 million, a significant discount from Messari's peak valuation of approximately $300 million in 2022. The deal highlights survival pressures on high-valuation crypto startups and industry consolidation during a bear market. Following the acquisition, Messari's data platform and API—covering assets, markets, news, research, and more—will be integrated into Blockworks. Messari CEO Diran Li will join Blockworks in a senior leadership role. Blockworks, founded in 2018, initially focused on media and events but has shifted toward building institutional data, investor relations, and compliance tools. Its recent Series A extension funding, aimed at consolidating fragmented crypto data, facilitated this acquisition. Messari, also founded in 2018, raised a $35 million Series B at its $300 million valuation but faced challenges post-2022 market downturn, including staff reductions and leadership changes. The acquisition combines Blockworks' strengths in issuer-side disclosure and compliance workflows with Messari's extensive datasets and API capabilities. The move aligns with a broader trend of mergers in the crypto sector as firms seek efficiency and aim to build comprehensive, standardized data infrastructure akin to traditional financial platforms like Bloomberg.

Foresight News06/15 03:15

From $300 Million to $10 Million: Messari Was Still Sold at a Discount

Foresight News06/15 03:15

Three Months, 35 Billion Yuan: Investors Rush to Grab the OpenAI of the Physical World

Investors flock to a physical AI startup as the race for the "OpenAI of the physical world" heats up. Ji Jia Shi Jie (GigaWorld), a company dedicated to developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for the physical world, has raised 3.5 billion RMB (approximately $490 million) in just three months, according to a report from investment media outlet Touzijie. The latest B2 funding round of 1 billion RMB attracted a wide range of top-tier investors, including sovereign wealth funds, industrial capital, and financial institutions. This brings the total funding for the young company, now valued over 10 billion RMB, to 3.5 billion RMB across three recent rounds. The company is led by Huang Guan, a post-90s Tsinghua University PhD with extensive experience in AI, autonomous driving, and entrepreneurship. Its core innovation is a "dual-pyramid" system comprising a five-layer data pyramid (from internet videos to real-world robot data) and a three-layer algorithm pyramid focused on world simulation, action alignment, and reinforcement learning. This system underpins its key models: the "World Action Model" (e.g., GigaBrain series for robot control) and the "World Generation Model" (e.g., GigaWorld series for simulating and understanding the physical world). Its models have reportedly achieved top rankings in global robotics benchmarks. Ji Jia Shi Jie argues that while current digital AGI excels in information processing, the next frontier is physical AGI—systems that can understand and interact with the real world. The company believes the field is approaching its "GPT-3 moment," a key inflection point in capability scaling. To achieve this, the company is pursuing a dual-market strategy. For the consumer (C) market, it launched the "SeeLight" brand and its S1 general-purpose humanoid robot, which has secured initial orders for deployment in real homes. For the business (B) market, it focuses on industrial automation with its Maker series robots, having signed agreements for large-scale deployment in factories, and its DriveDreamer world model for autonomous driving, which is already in use with over 30 automakers and tech companies. The report concludes that by bridging the gap between digital intelligence and physical action, Ji Jia Shi Jie aims to unlock a new wave of productivity, ultimately bringing physical AGI into everyday life.

marsbit06/15 01:30

Three Months, 35 Billion Yuan: Investors Rush to Grab the OpenAI of the Physical World

marsbit06/15 01:30

$9.4 Billion: The Largest Robotics Funding This Year Has Emerged

Munich-based humanoid robotics company Neura has completed a $1.4 billion (approximately RMB 94.9 billion) Series C funding round, valuing the company at around $7 billion and positioning it among the global leaders in the sector. The investment round is notable not just for its size—reportedly the largest in robotics this year—but also for its strategic backers, which include tech giants like NVIDIA and Amazon, alongside established industrial players such as German engineering firms Bosch and Schaeffler. This mix of investors signals a significant shift in the industry's focus from technological demonstrations and general-purpose narratives toward practical, industrial deployment and commercialization. Neura's approach centers on developing humanoid robots for defined, high-value industrial tasks rather than pursuing a general-purpose model. Its early validation comes from a partnership with BMW, where its robots are being tested on actual production lines. The involvement of Bosch and Schaeffler, companies deeply embedded in global manufacturing, underscores a growing belief that humanoid robots are transitioning from labs to viable factory-floor solutions. The article highlights two converging trends driving investment: advancements in AI and large language models, which enhance robots' perception and decision-making in unstructured environments, and mounting pressure from labor shortages and rising costs in major manufacturing regions. The funding landscape is now bifurcating between companies like Figure AI, focusing on versatile general-purpose robots, and firms like Neura, targeting specific vertical industrial applications with clearer, shorter paths to ROI. While technical hurdles remain, the core challenges for widespread adoption are increasingly seen as engineering and commercial in nature: managing the high integration and customization costs for different factory environments and establishing robust, localized maintenance and service networks. The record investment in Neura, particularly from industrial capital, indicates the industry's growing confidence in moving from proving feasibility to solving the practical problems of scalability, reliability, and building sustainable business models around humanoid robots in real-world settings like automotive manufacturing and hazardous labor environments.

marsbit06/14 02:54

$9.4 Billion: The Largest Robotics Funding This Year Has Emerged

marsbit06/14 02:54

Arbitrum Foundation Funding Proposal Seeks $16M, 1,700 ETH And 230M ARB

The Arbitrum Foundation is seeking substantial new funding through an on-chain governance vote. The proposal, titled "Continued Funding for the Arbitrum Foundation," requests $16 million in real-world assets (RWAs), 1,700 ETH, and 230 million ARB tokens to support its operations for another year beyond the period covered by a previous funding plan. According to a governance roundup, technical costs are projected to make up 54% of all anticipated expenses for 2027, highlighting the ongoing engineering and infrastructure needs of the Arbitrum One and Nova scaling networks. The vote, which closes on June 25, 2026, presents a key decision for ARB token holders on allocating significant treasury resources to the central operating body. The outcome will signal how Arbitrum's DAO balances decentralization with the practical need to fund ecosystem development, partnerships, and technical maintenance. The large request, particularly for native ARB tokens, makes this a sensitive governance moment with potential implications for market sentiment and the network's competitive position in the Ethereum scaling landscape.

bitcoinist06/13 10:35

Arbitrum Foundation Funding Proposal Seeks $16M, 1,700 ETH And 230M ARB