Financing Weekly Report | 20 public financing events, Yupp, a platform combining AI and encryption, completed a $33 million seed round of financing, led by a16z

Highlights of this issue

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 20 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (June 9-15); the total scale of funds exceeded US$260 million, of which about US$60 million was financing for the crypto asset reserves of listed companies. The overview is as follows:

• DeFi announced three investment and financing events, among which OpenTrade completed a strategic round of financing of US$7 million, with participation from a16z crypto and others;
• The Web3 game track announced one investment and financing event. The blockchain game development studio Orange Cap Games completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx and Yuga Labs.
• Web3+AI announced two investment and financing events, among which a16z Crypto announced that it led the $33 million seed round of financing for Yupp, a platform combining AI and encryption;
• The Infrastructure & Tools sector announced 8 investment and financing events, among which Web3 security startup Hypernative completed a $40 million Series B financing round led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Ballistic Ventures;
• In terms of other applications, 5 investment and financing events were announced, among which the Web3-driven consumer loyalty infrastructure Try Your Best (TYB) completed a US$11 million Series A financing, led by Offline Ventures and Strobe Ventures;
• Centralized finance announced one investment and financing event. Stablecoin payment startup Noah completed a $22 million seed round of financing, led by LocalGlobe.

DeFi

OpenTrade completes $7 million strategic round of financing, with participation from a16z crypto and others

British fintech company OpenTrade has completed a $7 million strategic round of financing, led by Notion Capital and Mercury Fund, with participation from a16z crypto, AlbionVC and CMCC Global. The company focuses on providing stablecoin yield services to high-inflation regions, with $47 million in assets under management and an average monthly trading volume of $200 million. OpenTrade provides underlying technical support to partners such as Spain's Criptan and Colombia's Littio through the "yield as a service" model, allowing users to obtain up to 9% of USD/EUR stablecoin yields through mobile applications. In markets such as Colombia, where bank deposit rates for USD are less than 0.4%, the service can yield up to 6%. The new financing will be used for technology upgrades and business expansion.

Silhouette Completes $3 Million Pre-Seed Round of Financing, Led by RockawayX

According to Silhouette's official announcement, it has completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round of financing led by RockawayX, with participating investors including Amber Group, HiveMind, Protagonist, No Limit Holdings, NGC Ventures and Echo.

Silhouette's "Shield Exchange" based on Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) is committed to implementing privacy-protected order matching and settlement functions on Hyperliquid, supporting HyperCore and HyperEVM, and providing a new DeFi experience with multiple high-level strategy operations including TWAP, VWAP, RFQ, etc. The project goal is to solve the problem of "excessive information transparency" in on-chain transactions, allowing users to trade freely without exposing strategies.

Institutional staking platform Colossus Digital completes approximately US$1.15 million in financing, with SBI Ven Capital participating

Institutional staking platform Colossus Digital has completed a €1 million (approximately $1.155 million) financing. The investment was made by a joint fund supported by SBI Ven Capital, Sygnum Bank and Azimut Group, and the funds are intended to accelerate the launch of the company's Institutional Hub, an infrastructure platform that connects regulated custodians with verification nodes for staking and governance. Colossus Digital, headquartered in Rome, is building a bilateral B2B marketplace that enables digital asset holders to interact with staking and DeFi protocols directly from a secure custody environment.

Web3 Games

Orange Cap Games Completes $3.5 Million Seed Round, Led by 1kx and Yuga Labs

Orange Cap Games, a blockchain game development studio, announced the completion of a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by 1kx and Yuga Labs, with participation from Bing Ventures, Infinity Ventures Crypto, and several angel investors. The financing will be used to promote the development of its Vibes TCG and Moonbirds products and ecosystems.

AI

a16z leads $33 million seed round in Yupp to build a decentralized AI assessment platform

a16z Crypto, led by Chris Dixon, announced that it has led a $33 million seed round of financing for Yupp, a platform that combines AI and cryptocurrencies. Yupp allows users to evaluate the results generated by multiple models of AI, and the selected preferences will generate signed data packets for model fine-tuning and evaluation. Users can be rewarded for contributing feedback, and the data is timely to maintain the vitality of the system. Yupp was co-founded by former executives from Twitter, Google, and Coinbase, aiming to build a "trustless" AI feedback market and become the default evaluation layer for future AI models.

Crypto startup TrueNorth raises $1 million in angel round

AI-driven crypto startup TrueNorth has raised $1 million in a strategic angel round of funding, backed by Bryan Pellegrino of LayerZero, Jeff Feng of SEI, and Jordi Alexander of Selini Capital, to build a highly personalized digital asset discovery platform. Currently in closed beta, the platform uses autonomous agents to monitor activity on blockchains, social media, and macroeconomic indicators, and generates high-signal investment tips for individual users.

Infrastructure & Tools

Web3 security company Hypernative completes $40 million Series B financing

Web3 security startup Hypernative has completed a $40 million Series B funding round, led by Ten Eleven Ventures and Ballistic Ventures, with participation from StepStone Group, Boldstart Ventures, and IBI Tech Fund. Hypernative focuses on real-time blockchain threat prevention and has served more than 200 customers, protecting more than $100 billion in total assets. Its AI system can identify signs of attacks in advance, and successfully warned of potential losses of $2.2 billion in 2024.

Crypto wallet infrastructure company Turnkey completes $30 million Series B financing, led by Bain Capital Crypto

Turnkey, a crypto wallet infrastructure company founded by former Coinbase employees, has completed a $30 million Series B round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Lightspeed Faction and Galaxy Ventures. Turnkey will use the new funds to expand its current 35-person team, focus on strengthening engineering capabilities, and promote the popularity of API wallet solutions.

OneBalance receives $20 million in Series A funding led by Cyber ​​Fund and Blockchain Capital

OneBalance, a cross-chain infrastructure company, announced the completion of a $20 million Series A round led by Cyber ​​Fund and Blockchain Capital, bringing the total financing to $25 million. The funds will be used to expand the team and expand the core product Toolkit, which simplifies asset transfers and revenue operations between multiple chains for users without manually handling bridges and Gas fees. OneBalance is led by Flashbots co-founder Stephane Gosselin, and its goal is to provide a seamless "one-click cross-chain" experience for stablecoin users.

Blockchain financial infrastructure startup CloudTech completes $14 million Series A funding

CloudTech, a blockchain financial infrastructure startup headquartered in Melbourne, Australia, announced the completion of a $14 million Series A financing round. It is reported that about $11 million of this financing transaction was provided in the form of Bitcoin and stablecoin USDT. The company's current business covers over-the-counter (OTC), stablecoin solutions, and CobWeb Pay, which can convert cryptocurrencies into Australian dollars for regular shopping. The new funds are intended to be used to launch institutional-grade digital asset custody solutions.

TOOL protocol developer nuConstruct completes $6 million seed round led by Cyber ​​Fund, plans to achieve 1 second transaction confirmation on Ethereum mainnet

Web3 infrastructure team nuConstruct announced the completion of a $6 million seed round led by Cyber ​​Fund, with participation from Maven11, DCG, Greenfield, Eden Block, and others. Its core product TOOL (Trustless Orderflow Operations Layer) is committed to dividing Ethereum's 12-second block into 12 1-second micro-rounds, achieving 1-second transaction confirmation without Rollup. TOOL builds a trusted execution environment through Intel TDX TEE to ensure on-chain privacy and sorting fairness, with the goal of replacing Flashbots MEV-boost and improving the on-chain transaction user experience. The protocol does not require a pledge or penalty mechanism, and relies entirely on economic incentives and decentralized network support. It is currently in a small-scale internal testing phase, and plans to achieve a validator pre-commitment rate of over 50% and an order flow share of over 80% within three months.

Ethereum L2 project RISE receives $4 million investment from Galaxy Ventures

Ethereum Layer 2 project RISE announced that it has received $4 million in investment from Galaxy Ventures, bringing the total funds raised to date to $8 million. The project has previously received investments from Vitalik Buterin and others. According to reports, RISE achieves a latency as low as 5 milliseconds through its Shreds transaction architecture, and the test network processes more than 50,000 transactions in a single block, with a target throughput of 100,000 TPS. RISE adopts the "basic sorting" solution based on Ethereum, aiming to maintain decentralization while solving performance bottlenecks.

Communications platform Towns Protocol completes additional financing of $3.3 million, led by Coinbase Ventures and others

Communications platform Towns Protocol announced that it has completed an additional $3.3 million in financing, led by Coinbase Ventures and echo. The financing was completed in April this year. Towns Protocol is built on the Base network and aims to promote the development of Web3 social and collaboration tools. Towns hopes to create a digital town square through decentralization and Web3, where members can define boundaries, make rules and build the world they want, and users will become the masters of the digital town square. Previously in April, Towns Protocol announced the completion of a $10 million Series B financing led by a16z crypto.

Crypto wallet service provider PlutoPe completes approximately $580,000 in Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Manit Gupta

Indian crypto wallet service provider PlutoPe announced the completion of a 50 million rupee (about 580,000 US dollars) Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Manit Gupta. The company mainly provides DeFi services based on non-custodial crypto wallets. Its main partners are stablecoin issuers, Layer 1 blockchains and banking institutions. The new funds are intended to be used to increase transaction volume and build a decentralized financial operating system.

other

Consumption:

TYB Completes $11 Million Series A Funding, Focusing on Web3 Consumer Loyalty Platform

Try Your Best (TYB), the second startup of Outdoor Voices founder Ty Haney, has completed a $11 million Series A financing round, led by Offline Ventures and Strobe Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures and Unusual Ventures. TYB focuses on building a Web3-driven consumer loyalty infrastructure, and has attracted 200 brands and 2 million users, focusing on serving Generation Z women. Platform users can obtain on-chain collectibles and points by participating in tasks, which significantly improves brand user stickiness and conversion rates.

Crypto asset reserves:

Brazilian listed company Méliuz raises $32.5 million to expand Bitcoin holdings

Brazilian listed technology company Méliuz announced that it has completed US$32.5 million in financing, and the funds will be used to increase its holdings of Bitcoin.

The Blockchain Group Completes €9.7 Million Funding to Advance Bitcoin Reserve Strategy

The Blockchain Group (ALTBG), a European listed company, announced the completion of 9.7 million euros in financing to advance its Bitcoin reserve strategy. The funds were raised through a combination of equity and convertible bonds, with major investors including Adam Back, TOBAM and Ludovic Chechin-Laurans. Among them, TOBAM subscribed to 6 million euros of convertible bonds with a conversion premium of 30%; Ludovic Chechin-Laurans invested 2.4 million euros in the form of Bitcoin; Adam Back converted all of his first-phase bonds into 14.9 million shares of ALTBG and subscribed for an additional 2.1 million shares. The financing is expected to increase the company's holdings by approximately 80 bitcoins, and the total reserve will reach 1,611.

Swedish H100 Group Completes $10.5 Million Funding to Advance Bitcoin Reserve Strategy

Swedish health and longevity company H100 Group announced that it has completed a $10.5 million (approximately 101 million Swedish kronor) financing, which will be used to expand its Bitcoin reserve strategy. Investors include Blockstream CEO Adam Back, UTXO Management and several family offices. The financing is divided into 69.65 million kronor share issuance and 31.35 million kronor interest-free convertible bonds, the latter of which can be converted into shares at 1.75 kronor per share. Since the first purchase of Bitcoin on May 22, H100's stock price has risen by nearly 400%.

Oblong, a listed company, raised $7.5 million to build the Bittensor ecosystem, and most of the funds will be used to purchase $TAO

Oblong, Inc., a Nasdaq-listed IT solution technology service provider, announced that it has raised approximately $7.5 million through a private placement to launch its artificial intelligence and digital asset strategy centered on Bittensor. The private placement will sell 1,989,392 shares of common stock at $3.77 per share and is expected to be completed on June 11, 2025. Oblong plans to use most of the funds to purchase Bittensor's native token $TAO and support the development of its decentralized AI network, including the construction of open markets for computing, reasoning, data, and model training. The company will also develop software tools in the Bittensor ecosystem and participate in Subnet 0 to obtain $TAO revenue.

Centralized Finance

Stablecoin startup Noah completes $22 million seed round, led by LocalGlobe

Stablecoin payment startup Noah announced the completion of a $22 million seed round of financing, led by European veteran venture capital LocalGlobe, with participation from angel investors such as Felix Capital, FJ Labs and Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. Former Adyen global sales director Thijn Lamers joined as a co-founder, bringing with him a wealth of payment industry resources.

It is reported that Noah provides a stablecoin payment API that can access 50 currencies and covers 70 countries, with a cumulative transaction volume of over 1 billion US dollars. Lamers said that his connections and reputation are one of the company's differentiating advantages. CEO Shah Ramezani emphasized that "the payment network is more important than technology."