Highlights of This Issue
CryptoRank statistics show that in 2026, the sector with the highest average single financing round in the crypto industry is prediction markets, with an average funding amount of $118 million per round. The following categories are exchanges ($76.2 million), blockchain ($47.8 million), and compliance ($29.4 million).
This week's financings perfectly reflect the year's capital flow trends: large-scale capital continues to cluster in trading, compliance, and digital asset infrastructure, with traditional financial institutions becoming increasingly important participants. Notably, the Japanese financial group SBI Holdings participated in two major funding rounds for Gauntlet and EDX Markets.
Compared to crypto financing, the AI sector saw several large transactions exceeding $100 million this week. Prime Intellect completed a $130 million Series A round, Norm secured $120 million in new funding, and Gradium's cumulative funding surpassed $100 million. It's worth noting that these projects primarily build business models around specific scenarios such as enterprise-level AI infrastructure, legal services, and real-time voice.
Last week, activity in the crypto primary market remained generally subdued, while centralized finance and on-chain finance continued to receive capital injections. According to PANews' incomplete statistics, there were 9 investment and financing events globally in the blockchain space last week (7.6-7.12), with a total funding scale exceeding $261 million. An overview is as follows:
- The DeFi track announced 1 investment and financing event: DeFi risk management and asset allocation platform Gauntlet secured $125 million in exclusive funding from the Japanese financial group SBI Holdings.
- The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced 4 investment and financing events, including post-quantum cryptography management platform QIZ Security completing a $17 million seed round led by Merlin Ventures and others.
- The Centralized Finance field announced 3 investment and financing events, including crypto exchange EDX Markets completing a $76 million Series C round led by SBI Holdings.
- The Web3+AI field announced 1 investment and financing event: PayGo received strategic investment from Signum Capital, Ledger Capital, and United Overseas Bank to accelerate micro-payment infrastructure construction for the machine economy.
Crypto Financing
DeFi
DeFi Risk Management Giant Gauntlet Raises $125 Million from SBI Holdings
DeFi risk management and asset allocation platform Gauntlet raised $125 million in exclusive funding from the Japanese financial group SBI Holdings. This round significantly surpasses its Series B in 2022, which was nearly $24 million at a valuation of about $1 billion. SBI, a Tokyo-listed financial group with a total market cap exceeding $10 billion, has invested in multiple crypto companies including Ripple, Circle, and Morpho. Gauntlet, founded by former Wall Street quantitative analyst Tarun Chitra, initially provided stress testing and risk analysis for DeFi protocols. In recent years, its business has pivoted towards "vault curation," assessing risks of various DeFi yield vault strategies. Current clients include Apollo, Coinbase, and stablecoin issuer Circle.
Infrastructure & Tools
Post-Quantum Cryptography Management Platform QIZ Security Completes $17 Million Seed Round, Led by Merlin Ventures and Others
QIZ Security announced the completion of a $17 million seed round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners and Merlin Ventures, with participation from Evolution Equity Partners, Qbeat Ventures, Singtel Innov8, Qino Cyber Capital, and others. The company positions itself as a crypto-asset and post-quantum cryptography (PQC) management platform, providing continuous crypto-asset discovery, risk modeling, and governance. It aims to help large financial, communication, healthcare, and critical infrastructure clients achieve "crypto-agility" to mitigate the risks posed by "Q-Day," the potential emergence of quantum computing as early as 2029 that could crack existing encryption systems. QIZ collaborates with Cisco, AWS, Google, CrowdStrike, Deloitte, EY, IBM, and others to promote enterprise quantum-safe migration planning.
TrueDAO Secures $10 Million Strategic Funding to Accelerate AI Financial Infrastructure Development
TrueDAO announced the completion of a $10 million strategic funding round, led by Brevan Howard Digital, with participation from Zee Prime Capital, Jump Capital, and others. The funds will be used for core AI protocol development, AI risk control and stress testing systems, security audits and real-time monitoring, bug bounty programs, as well as advancing global compliance assessments and ecosystem partnerships. TrueDAO positions itself as a cross-chain modular decentralized financial infrastructure, providing liquidity and reserve management, risk alerts, yield distribution, and governance support for various projects. The project will subsequently advance testnet, developer tools, and ecosystem integration. It plans to disclose protocol operation and reserve data in phases, with specific launch timelines and token incentives subject to official announcements and regulatory requirements.
On-Chain Clearing Platform KOR Protocol Completes $7.5 Million Series A Round with Participation from 1kx and Others
KOR Protocol, focused on the entertainment sector, completed a $7.5 million Series A round with participation from 1kx, Blockchain Capital, and others, valuing the company at $100 million. The funds will be used for platform development, ecosystem growth, partner integration, and plans to launch a token. KOR Protocol is an on-chain creative asset clearing platform built on Coinbase Layer 2, providing verification, routing, and settlement infrastructure for creative works like music and film. By registering assets on-chain, KOR helps match creators with suitable brands, platforms, and distributors, enabling programmable split payments via stablecoins like USDC.
Blockchain Analytics Firm Elliptic Announces Investment from Circle Ventures
Blockchain analytics company Elliptic announced on platform X that Circle Ventures has invested in Elliptic. The specific amount was not disclosed. This investment follows Elliptic's $120 million Series D round in May, led by One Peak with participation from Nasdaq Ventures, Deutsche Bank, and British Business Bank. Circle has also joined Elliptic's Agentic Design Partner Program, which brings together infrastructure providers, compliance leaders, and tech teams to collaborate on developing cutting-edge agentic compliance solutions.
Centralized Finance
Crypto Exchange EDX Markets Completes $76 Million Series C Round Led by SBI Holdings
Wall Street-backed crypto exchange EDX Markets announced the completion of a $76 million Series C funding round, led by the Japanese financial group SBI Holdings. The capital will be used to expand its institutional digital asset trading, clearing, and settlement capabilities, accelerate product development, and drive global business expansion. SBI previously launched the trust bank-backed yen stablecoin JPYSC and plans to handle dollar stablecoins like RLUSD and USDC in Japan. This investment is seen as part of its strategy to strengthen its layout in compliant digital asset infrastructure. Earlier this year, EDX launched its crypto-as-a-service product "EDX FlowConnect" and submitted an application to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish EDX Trust, a regulated custodian and clearing agency to provide custody, clearing, settlement, and risk management services for institutions.
Tether Invests $20 Million Betting on Brazil's Mercado Bitcoin to Expand On-Chain Financial Services
Tether announced a $20 million investment in a strategic growth funding round for Latin American on-chain financial services platform Mercado Bitcoin, supporting its expansion in areas such as tokenization, stablecoin payments, credit, on-chain capital markets, and compliant digital financial services. Founded in 2013, Mercado Bitcoin currently boasts 4.5 million users and has issued over 2 billion Brazilian reais in tokenized assets, holding more than 10 financial licenses in Brazil and Europe. Tether stated that this investment will further advance on-chain financial infrastructure development in Brazil and Latin America and accelerate mainstream adoption of stablecoins and asset tokenization.
Crypto Startup M1X Global Completes $5.5 Million Seed Round Led by Paradigm
Crypto startup M1X Global completed a $5.5 million seed round, led by Paradigm with participation from Breed VC, bringing its total funding to $8.5 million. Previously, the company raised a $3 million angel round in March, with investors including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan and Cumberland Labs CEO Tama Churchouse.
M1X Global, which builds sovereign financial infrastructure, partnered with the Republic of the Marshall Islands to issue USDM1. USDM1 is a tokenized U.S. dollar-denominated sovereign debt instrument, backed one-to-one by U.S. Treasury securities and natively issued by a sovereign nation on a public blockchain. Initially issued on the Stellar blockchain, USDM1 is now also tradable on the Canton and Solana blockchains.
Web3+AI
PayGo Secures Strategic Investment from Signum Capital, Ledger Capital, and United Overseas Bank to Accelerate Machine Economy Micro-Payment Infrastructure
PayGo, an HTTP-native payment infrastructure based on the x402 open standard, officially announced the completion of a strategic investment round. Investors include United Overseas Bank (UOB), Signum Capital, and Ledger Capital. It is reported that PayGo is natively built on the ENI blockchain. Its core business leverages the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code to provide request-level instant stablecoin (USDT/USDC) payment and settlement services for APIs, AI agents, and the machine economy, featuring no account, no subscription, and no API key required. PAYG is the project's governance token.
Acquisitions
Cross-Border Payments Infrastructure Company Nium Acquires Crypto Wallet and Card Issuing Company Cypher
Cross-border payments infrastructure company Nium announced the acquisition of crypto-native non-custodial wallet and card issuing company Cypher. The transaction will expand Nium's core capabilities as a compliant funds flow and settlement infrastructure between fiat and digital assets. Cypher, founded by Kuberan Marimuthu (Kube) with backing from Y Combinator and Coinbase Ventures, focused over the past four years on product development at the intersection of on-chain and banking systems. Kube has joined Nium as Vice President of Digital Assets, and Cypher's engineering team has also joined.
South Korea's Mirae Asset Group Approved to Acquire 92.06% of Korbit Shares for 133.4 Billion Won
South Korean regulators announced the approval for Mirae Asset Group's subsidiary Mirae Asset Consulting to acquire a 92.06% stake in South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Korbit. The transaction amount is approximately 133.4 billion won (about $98 million). This acquisition is reportedly the first time a traditional South Korean financial group has completed the acquisition of a virtual asset exchange. Due to Korbit's low market share, regulators believe this merger will not have exclusionary competitive effects in the securities business or asset management business, and is unlikely to significantly impact the competitive landscape of future digital asset ETFs and other markets.
AI & Robotics Financing Highlights
AI
Decentralized AI Protocol Prime Intellect Completes $130 Million Series A Round Led by Radical Ventures
Decentralized AI protocol Prime Intellect announced the completion of a $130 million Series A round, led by Radical Ventures with participation from NVIDIA Ventures, Intel Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, and existing investors. Cumulative funding now exceeds $150 million, to be used for building an open superintelligence stack. Founded in 2024, Prime Intellect is dedicated to building an "Open Superintelligence Stack," providing enterprises with a full-stack AI agent development infrastructure covering compute, large-scale reinforcement learning, sandboxing, evaluation, and deployment. Its clients include over 6,000 enterprises and startups like Ramp and Zapier, with annualized revenue exceeding $100 million. The company plans to expand its compute clusters and reinforcement learning scale, and invest in frontier directions like long-horizon agents, recurrent language models, and continual learning.
AI Legal Services Company Norm Secures $120 Million Funding, Led by Khosla Ventures
AI legal startup Norm completed a new $120 million funding round, with a post-money valuation of approximately $1.2 billion. The round was led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Blackstone, Bain Capital Ventures, Coatue Management, and others. Cumulative funding exceeds $260 million. Founded in 2023, unlike the traditional model of selling software to law firms, Norm established its own law firm, Norm Law, to directly provide clients with legal services co-piloted by lawyers and AI engineers, charging based on outcomes rather than billable hours. The company is also developing "AI regulating AI" compliance agents for heavily regulated industries like finance and healthcare. New funds will be used to expand its engineering and legal teams and strengthen related systems.
AI Voice Company Gradium Completes $100 Million Seed Round, NVIDIA Participates
Paris-based startup Gradium, which provides voice AI models, announced that its cumulative funding has surpassed $100 million. NVIDIA joined as a new shareholder in the latest seed round extension. Gradium stated that it recently launched products like real-time speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), Gradium Translate, and Phonon within months. It plans to establish a new office in San Francisco to be closer to the local startup ecosystem and accelerate talent recruitment.
AI Writing Startup Marker Secures $13 Million Seed Round
London-based AI writing startup, co-founded by a former DeepMind creative lead, emerged from stealth mode and announced the completion of a $13 million seed funding round. The company, named Marker, raised this round led by Index Ventures, with participation from Local Globe. Angel investors include Writely co-founder Steve Newman, Slack co-founder Cal Henderson, and Hugging Face's Thomas Wolf. According to the introduction, early test users of Marker have utilized the platform to write various content including blog posts, Substack newsletters, business documents, memos, and novels. With growing concerns about "AI slop," Marker's CEO Steinback said: "We are at a critical moment where people can choose the future of writing; I believe people will choose solutions that value the craft of writing, not the churned-out, low-quality content that is severely eroding the essence of writing."
Robotics
Physical AI Startup Mowito Raises $3 Million, Aims to Train Factory Robots via Demonstration Rather Than Code
Physical AI startup Mowito completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round, led by Version One Ventures, with participation from All In Capital, Unisol, and iSeed. Angel investors include AI researcher Soumith Chintala and founders from Foundry Robotics, Coformer.ai, Better Capital, and others. Founded in 2024 by Puru Rastogi, Adityanag Nagesh, and Safar V, Mowito builds AI foundation models for industrial robot arms. It enables robots to learn tasks by observing human demonstrations rather than explicit programming, addressing the bottleneck of software programming in manufacturing automation—when production lines change, engineers don't need to rewrite control code.
