Highlights of This Issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 13 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (1.19-1.25), with a total funding scale exceeding $222 million. The overview is as follows:
- DeFi announced 5 investment and financing events, among which the fintech and asset tokenization company Superstate announced the completion of an $82.5 million Series B funding round;
- The Web3+AI track announced 3 investment and financing events, among which the AI agent infrastructure and application layer Warden completed a $4 million strategic funding round;
- The Infrastructure & Tools field announced 2 investment and financing events, among which the Bitcoin payment startup ZBD completed a $40 million Series C funding round, led by Blockstream Capital;
- The Centralized Finance field announced 3 investment and financing events, among which the Argentina-based fintech company Pomelo completed a $55 million Series C funding round, led by Kaszek and Insight Partners.
DeFi
Fintech and Asset Tokenization Company Superstate Completes $82.5 Million Series B Funding
Fintech and asset tokenization company Superstate announced the completion of an $82.5 million Series B funding round, led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global, with participation from Haun Ventures, Brevan Howard Digital, Galaxy Digital, Bullish, ParaFi, and others. The company plans to use this funding round to build a full on-chain issuance layer on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains for issuing and trading SEC-registered shares. Its goal is to leverage blockchain technology to make the company fundraising and listing process more efficient.
Superstate currently manages over $1.23 billion in assets and operates two tokenized funds. As an SEC-registered transfer agent, the company, through its "Opening Bell" platform, has supported listed companies in directly issuing and selling digital shares to investors on public blockchains by the end of 2025, enabling real-time management of issuance, settlement, and ownership records.
River Completes $12 Million Strategic Funding Round with Participation from Maelstrom Fund, The Spartan Group, etc.
River announced the completion of a $12 million strategic funding round, with investors including Tron DAO, Justin Sun, the Maelstrom Fund founded by Arthur Hayes, The Spartan Group, and several US and European Nasdaq-listed companies. This funding will support River in expanding its presence in EVM and non-EVM ecosystems, including networks such as TRON and Sui, and continuing to build on-chain liquidity infrastructure.
Tokenized Risk Startup Cork Completes $5.5 Million Seed Round Led by a16z and CSX
Startup Cork announced the completion of a $5.5 million seed funding round, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), CSX, and Road Capital, with participation from 432 Ventures, BitGo Ventures, Cooley, DEPO Ventures, Funfair Ventures, G20 Group, Gate Labs, Hyperithm Gate, IDEO Ventures, PEER VC, Stake Capital, and WAGMI Ventures, among others.
Cork is dedicated to building a "programmable risk layer," aiming to make the implicit risks in real-world assets transparent and tradable through tokenization. Its infrastructure allows asset managers, issuers, and others to create customized swap markets to enhance the liquidity of redemptions for on-chain assets, risk transparency, and market confidence. This tool can also be used to assess the risks of crypto-native products such as stablecoins and staking tokens. The team plans to launch the first production-level risk markets in the coming months and expand cooperation with treasuries and asset issuers.
HyperLend Announces Completion of $1.7 Million Funding to Date with Participation from RockawayX, etc.
Lending platform HyperLend disclosed the HPL token economic model allocation: 30.14% for ecosystem growth and incentives, 25% for genesis allocation, 22.5% for core contributors, 17.36% allocated to strategic investors, and 5% reserved for liquidity. The protocol has completed $1.7 million in funding to date, with investors including RockawayX, No Limit Holdings, Nucleus, Duplicate Capital, Dumpster, and others. Strategic investors receive 10% of their allocation at Token Generation Event (TGE), followed by a 4-month lock-up period, with the remaining portion vesting over 2 years.
Saturn Announces Completion of $800,000 Funding with Participation from YZi Labs, Sora Ventures, etc.
Saturn announced the completion of an $800,000 funding round, with participation from YZi Labs, Sora Ventures, and several well-known angel investors in the cryptocurrency field. The funds will be used to build USDat, a Bitcoin-backed stablecoin protocol offering an 11%+ yield. Saturn stated that the yield is provided through the Strategy perpetual preferred shares STRC, while unlocking global on-chain digital credit access.
AI
AI Agent Infrastructure and Application Layer Warden Completes $4 Million Strategic Funding
The infrastructure and application layer project for AI agents, Warden, announced the completion of a $4 million strategic funding round, valuing the company at $200 million. This round saw participation from strategic partners and ecosystem contributors including 0G, Messari, and Venice.AI. The funding aims to accelerate product development and expand its AI agent capabilities in areas such as trading, automation, and programmable wealth. According to reports, Warden is building the full stack for the agent internet, including next-generation agent crypto wallets.
AI-Native Content Creation Engine AKEDO Completes $5 Million Seed Round with Participation from Sfermion, etc.
The AI-native content creation engine and publishing platform AKEDO announced the completion of a $5 million seed funding round. This seed round was led by Karatage, with participation from investors in the gaming, artificial intelligence, and cryptocurrency fields, including Sfermion, Collab + Currency, MARBLEX, Seed Club, The Open Platform, TON Ventures, Gagra Ventures, Kenetic Capital, Metalabs Ventures, and others.
AKEDO is committed to building an "ambiance coding" platform driven by a multi-agent AI system, aiming to significantly improve the efficiency of game and content development through collaborative AI agents. The platform allows users to create game collections, generate AIGC content, and plans to support one-click collection token issuance in the future, unlocking diverse revenue streams for creators and protocols. The company's CEO stated that this funding will be used to expand its multi-agent infrastructure.
BNB Chain Ecosystem AI Companion Project Lazbubu Completes Strategic Round Led by Metis
The BNB Chain ecosystem AI companion project Lazbubu announced the completion of a strategic funding round led by Metis, with participation from Hotcoin Labs, Honey Capital, APUS Capital, and Becker Ventures. This round of funding will be used for core product development, global user growth, ecosystem partnership expansion, and further refinement of the DAT (Data Anchored Token) mechanism.
Lazbubu is an on-chain AI companion agent based on the DAT mechanism, achieving personalized growth by recording user interaction data (such as conversations, decisions, etc.). All data is anchored via BNB Chain, ensuring continuous verifiability and user autonomy. During its testnet phase, it attracted over 80,000 users and generated over 1 million interactions.
The DAT mechanism supports real-time conversion of AI interaction behaviors into on-chain assets, allowing users to view, transfer, or combine related data. Future plans for the project include expanding multimodal interaction capabilities, achieving cross-chain compatibility, and launching community governance mechanisms.
AI Startup Humans& Completes $480 Million Seed Round with Valuation Reaching $4.48 Billion
Human-oriented AI company Humans&, co-founded by former members of Anthropic, xAI, and Google, completed a $480 million seed funding round, valuing the company at $4.48 billion. Investors include Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, SV Angel, GV, and Emerson Collective, among others. The company is dedicated to developing AI tools that enhance human collaboration. Team members hail from OpenAI, Meta, AI2, MIT, etc., focusing on multi-agent reinforcement learning, AI memory, and user understanding, aiming to reshape AI model training and interaction methods.
(This financing is not included in this week's data statistics)
Nvidia Invests $150 Million in AI Inference Company Baseten
The AI inference-focused startup Baseten has completed a $300 million funding round, reaching a valuation of $5 billion, nearly double its previous valuation. This round was led by venture capital firm IVP and Alphabet's independent growth fund CapitalG. Chip giant Nvidia also participated in the investment, injecting $150 million into Baseten as part of the deal. This transaction highlights Nvidia's active deployment in the AI inference field regarding startups. As the industry's focus shifts from training models to large-scale operation and inference (where AI models generate outputs based on inputs), Nvidia is increasing its investment in related startups while continuing to invest in its own AI chip customers.
(This financing is not included in this week's data statistics)
Infrastructure & Tools
Bitcoin Payment Startup ZBD Completes $40 Million Series C Funding Led by Blockstream Capital
Bitcoin payment startup ZBD announced the completion of a $40 million Series C funding round. This round was led by Blockstream Capital (which invested $36 million); other investors and the company valuation were not disclosed. Headquartered in New Jersey, ZBD primarily provides payment software solutions for video games, supporting multiple transaction processings including Bitcoin. The company is not involved in NFT or crypto-based gameplay but focuses on leveraging blockchain as a payment channel to help game developers establish direct financial relationships with players, enabling transfers between users and in-game reward distribution. The company currently has 70 employees and partnered with 55 games in 2025. This funding will be used to expand its payment product suite over the next year.
Bitcoin-Native L1 Protocol Bitway Completes $4.444 Million Seed Round Led by TRON DAO
The Bitcoin-native Layer 1 protocol and infrastructure platform Bitway announced the completion of a $4.444 million seed funding round led by TRON DAO, with participation from HTX Ventures and others. To date, Bitway has raised over $5.8 million from institutional investors. After completing the first seed financing round, it completed a targeted strategic funding round, valuing Bitway at $100 million.
Bitway was founded by former Binance team members and was previously incubated through YZi Labs' EASY Residency program and launched via the Binance Booster program. Bitway has two core products: the on-chain wealth management platform Bitway Earn and the Layer 1 application chain Bitway Chain, specifically for payment and financing solutions.
Centralized Finance
Argentine Payment Startup Pomelo Completes $55 Million Series C Funding, to Launch Stablecoin Credit Card
Argentina-based fintech company Pomelo completed a $55 million Series C funding round led by Kaszek and Insight Partners, aiming to deepen its presence in the Latin American market and expand its global business. The funds will be used to expand its credit card payment processing business in Mexico and Brazil and launch a global credit card settled with the stablecoin USDC. Pomelo also plans to develop real-time and intelligent agent payment systems that can operate cross-border, serving traditional banks and large international clients. Current partners already include Visa, Mastercard, Binance, Western Union, and others.
Dutch Cryptocurrency Platform Finst Completes €8 Million Series A Funding
Dutch cryptocurrency platform Finst completed an €8 million Series A funding round, led by Endeit Capital, with follow-on investments from existing investors including Spinnin' Records founder Eelko van Kooten and DEGIRO co-founder Mark Franse. This financing brings Finst's total funding to €15 million.
The platform was founded in 2023 and has obtained crypto asset service provider authorization from the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM), serving retail and institutional clients in 30 European countries. The company stated that this round of funding will be used to expand into the European market, develop new products and services, including expanding staking coverage and market-leading interest rates, increasing asset selection and platform features, and developing more product lines for institutional and professional users.
"Crypto-as-a-Service" Platform CheckSig Completes €3.5 Million Series A Funding
European "Crypto-as-a-Service" platform CheckSig announced the completion of a €3.5 million Series A funding round at a valuation of €33.5 million. To date, its total funding has reached €6.2 million. The company obtained a MiCAR license this year and provides crypto custody, crypto trading, cryptocurrency tax withholding, and other services, aiming to provide secure and transparent cryptocurrency services for individual and institutional investors.
