Financing Highlights | a16z leads investment in AI startup Hebbia; Galaxy participates in Telegram’s crypto gaming ecosystem Pixelverse

According to BlockBeats statistics, the total number of financings last week was 18, which is less than before, with a total amount of about US$303.8 million and an average financing amount of US$16.8778 million. Among them, Web3.0+AI fields occupy the majority, digital asset management/payment fields are relatively more, infrastructure fields and DeFi fields are more, social/creator economy fields and metaverse/GameFi fields are less, and NFT/digital fashion fields and other fields have no financing. The following figure shows the proportion of financing in each sector last week:

Metaverse/GameFi

In the field of Metaverse/GameFi, there were 2 financings with a total amount of US$2 million, accounting for 0.66% of the total financing last week.

Pixelverse

On July 12, The Block reported that the Telegram-based crypto game ecosystem Pixelverse has completed another $2 million in financing. Galaxy Interactive, Crit Ventures and Arc Community participated in this financing together with well-known individual investors in the cryptocurrency field Alex Kruger, Luke Belmar, and Mike Dudas. After this round of financing, its total financing amount has reached $7.5 million.

Pixelverse is a cyberpunk-themed entertainment studio and game ecosystem dedicated to making Web3 technology fun and accessible to the public. Pixelverse's goal is to create a low-threshold game that allows players to easily enter the world of Web3, experience the true ownership of in-game assets, and reward loyal players with a reward mechanism. At the same time, Pixelverse is committed to creating an immersive gaming experience that aims to attract a wider user base, including those from the Web2 field, and promote the popularization and popularization of Web3 technology.

Other financing in the Metaverse/GameFi field includes:

On July 13, the massively multiplayer online football management game Soccerverse announced on the X platform that it had officially completed a $3.1 million financing led by Final Fantasy publisher @SquareEnix. It is understood that this fund will subsequently promote the project's mission to use blockchain technology to change football management games.

Previously, the project completed a seed round of financing led by early investor Hiro Capital in February 2023, and its total financing has reached 4 million US dollars.

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DeFi

A total of 2 financings were raised in the DeFi field, with a total amount of more than 4.6 million US dollars, accounting for 1.51% of the total financing last week.

Tread.fi

On July 11, according to The Block, Tread.fi, an algorithmic crypto trading platform founded by former Morgan Stanley employees, completed a $3.5 million seed round of financing, led by New Form Capital, with participation from Aquanow, Varys Capital, GBV Capital, Thanefield Capital, etc.

Tread.fi's Trading as a Service (TaaS) is a distributed trading application that enables users to trade on various centralized exchanges by executing algorithms. Self-hosted deployment allows customers to run their own private instance of TaaS locally or in their own virtual private cloud (AWS, Google Cloud, etc.). In this deployment, TaaS will connect directly to the exchange. API keys, transaction history and balances will be kept confidential.

David Jeong, founder and CEO of Tread.fi and former vice president of quantitative research at Morgan Stanley, declined to comment on valuation, but said that this round of financing adopts a rolling future equity simple agreement (SAFE) structure with a symbolic side letter, laying the foundation for the next round of financing in the first quarter of 2025.

The rest of DeFi financing includes:

On July 9, the on-chain credit and yield platform Idle announced the completion of a $1.1 million strategic round of financing, led by investment company RockawayX and participated by Fasanara Digital. As of now, Idle's total financing has reached $2.4 million. The company plans to use the funds to further develop on-chain credit infrastructure, etc. According to reports, Idle is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that provides yield automation and hedging tools for the decentralized finance (DeFi) market. The platform has accumulated $300 million in liquidity and has a trading volume of over $2 billion.

Social/Creator Economy

There was a total of 1 financing in the social/creator economy field, with a total amount of over 4 million US dollars, accounting for 1.32% of the total financing last week.

RECRD

On July 11, according to Alexablockchain, SocialFi platform RECRD announced the completion of US$4 million in financing, led by Sui Foundation, DNA Fund, Alphabit Fund, and angel investors such as former Netflix co-founder Mitch Lowe and former NBA player Mitch Richmon.ECRD allows creators and users to convert their content into NFTs and obtain instant monetization through dynamic video interactions.

RECRD aims to carve out a unique niche by enabling monetization through shareable short-form content and dynamic video reactions called REBNDS. This functionality is coupled with DeFi integration powered by the SUI blockchain. Founded by tech entrepreneurs Anoir Houmou and Dominic Frazer-Imregh, RECRD provides a platform where expressive videos can be instantly monetized and converted into NFTs. This creates a mutually beneficial ecosystem where creators, users, and advertisers can transparently share and own tradable content.

“The future of social media lies in empowering creators and engaging users in unprecedented ways. Our goal at RECRD is to create an ecosystem where every piece of visual content can be transparently monetized, shared, and owned,” said Anoir Houmou, Founder and CEO of RECRD.

Infrastructure

A total of 7 financings in the infrastructure field, with a total amount of more than 38.7 million US dollars, accounting for 12.74% of the total financing last week.

ZAP

On July 12, according to The Block, Blast Ecological Token Distribution Protocol ZAP is about to complete $15.1 million in financing, with a valuation of $100 million. Francis, the anonymous founder and CEO of ZAP, said that ZAP has completed three rounds of financing, namely a $900,000 seed round of financing in December last year (valued at $15 million), a $2.1 million private round of financing last month (valued at $30 million), and a $12.1 million financing in the ongoing "vault sale" (valued at $100 million).

It is reported that investors in ZAP's seed and private rounds include Rarestone Capital, Cypher Capital, Sharding Capital, Luca Netz of Pudgy Penguins, Larry Cermak of The Block, and Chelsea Jiang of Foresight Ventures.

ZAP is a community-driven token issuance protocol that aims to alleviate current problems in the field of token issuance and provide value to founders and investors. It is a set of token launch tools built on Blast. Incubated by Rarestone Ventures, ZAP features native gamification and SocialFi elements, an "invest now, pay later" option powered by Blast native earnings, and plans to provide permissionless, code-free token issuance, and plans to explore LBP in the future.

Rome

On July 9, the crypto startup Rome announced the completion of $9 million in financing. This round of financing was jointly participated by Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, HashKey, Portal Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot VC, LBank, Anagram, TRGC, Perridon Ventures and well-known angel investors including Anatoly Yakovenko, Nick White, Santiago Santos, Comfy Capital, Austin Federa, Jason Yanowitz.

Rome was founded by Anil Kumar and Sattvik Kansal, aiming to build Solana into a basic network for shared sequencers and data availability (DA), that is, using Solana as an auxiliary network to provide services for Layer2 blockchains built on Ethereum.

The project also aims to enable "atomic transactions" between Ethereum Layer2 networks, that is, multiple transactions on different blockchains. If any part of the transaction fails, all transactions will not go through, and users will only pay the fee for Solana transactions. The project plans to launch a test network by the end of 2024 and a main network in mid-2025.

Dora

On July 10, according to official news, multi-chain search engine Dora announced the completion of US$5.5 million in financing, led by Dragonfly and Lemniscap, and participated by Robot Ventures, Maven 11, Arche Capital, etc.

It is reported that Dora has created the Dora block browser and Dora discovery engine to promote on-chain adoption, and will enhance all interoperability solutions integrated into Dora. Currently, Dora provides multi-chain queries, supports multiple public chains such as Ethereum, and includes rollups and side chains.

Dora plans to use the new funds to expand more experiences into Dora, such as adding interoperability solutions, integrating all current and future chains into Dora, and will continue to join L1, L2, L3 and cultivate new infinite frontiers.

The rest of the infrastructure financing includes:

On July 9, Fragments, the Ampleforth protocol development company, announced that the Ampleforth Foundation's decentralized low-volatility commodity currency SPOT project completed a $1 million strategic round of financing, with Coinbase Ventures participating.

It is reported that SPOT aims to combine the characteristics of fiat currencies such as the US dollar and gold or Bitcoin to create a "completely decentralized" and "significantly low-volatility" asset that can be used in the on-chain economy. The project team said that SPOT is not intended to be as stable as a stablecoin. The SPOT flatcoin, currently available on Ethereum, will also be launched on Coinbase’s incubated Layer 2 network Base as part of the protocol.

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On July 9, Web3 identity layer idOS completed a $4.5 million financing round led by Fabric Ventures. idOS has now formed an alliance with Arbitrum, Circle Ventures, RippleX, GnosisDAO, NEAR Protocol, etc. The alliance aims to develop the Web3 identity layer and promote the adoption of decentralized identity throughout the Web3 space.

According to reports, idOS is a decentralized data storage and access management protocol. It enables the ecosystem to provide an identity layer for dApps to solve compliant user onboarding issues and significantly reduce friction. For users, idOS provides control over their data and the ability to decide with whom to share the data.

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On July 9, Satoshi Protocol, a stablecoin protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem, announced the completion of its seed round of financing. The total amount of this round of financing is US$2 million, led by CMS Holdings and RockTree Capital, and participating investors include Cypher Capital, Side Door Ventures, Optic Capital, Metalpha (NASDAQ: MATH, a subsidiary of Bitmain), Outliers Fund, Comma3, and angel investors Paul Taylor (formerly BlackRock) and Yenwen Feng (Perpetual Protocol).

Satoshi Protocol is the first over-collateralized stablecoin protocol in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Users can deposit BTC and interest-bearing assets based on BTC such as LST, mint the US dollar stablecoin $SAT at a collateral rate of 110%, and participate in transactions, liquidity pools, lending and other scenarios to earn income.

Since its release three months ago, the protocol has been officially deployed on the BEVM and Bitlayer mainnets, and has also been connected to BOB, Botanix, B², Anduro (incubated by MARA), Omni Network and other testnets for closed beta testing. The team is committed to expanding the use scenarios of SAT stablecoins and has reduced the interest on minting stablecoins to 0%, aiming to encourage users and projects to build the BTC ecosystem together.

The latest announcement stated that Satoshi Protocol is developing a Runes stablecoin based on the Bitcoin mainnet. In addition, through cooperation with projects such as Omni Network, it will connect the Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystems to realize the vision of "full-chain stablecoins".

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On July 10, BOB (Build on Bitcoin), a hybrid second-layer project driven by Bitcoin and Ethereum, completed $1.6 million in financing. Ledger Ventures led the round, with angel investors including notables from BlackRock, Rarible, Ordinals, Aave, Curve, Threshold, Magic Eden, Mechanism, Injective, Vessel Capital, Babylon and Centrifuge.

Of the funds raised, $1 million will be allocated to the BOB incubator to support new startups focused on Bitcoin infrastructure and BOB dapps. BOB aims to connect Bitcoin's mass adoption potential with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) functionality and its ecosystem through rollup solutions that use Bitcoin to ensure security and give users access to dapps, DeFi and stablecoins.

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Digital Asset Management/Payment

A total of 4 financings in the field of digital asset management/payment, with a total amount of over US$123 million, accounting for 40.49% of the total financing last week.

Partior

On July 12, Singapore cross-border payment and settlement company Partior completed a US$60 million Series B financing, led by Peak XV Partners. Other investors include Jump Trading, Valor Capital and its existing shareholder Temasek Holdings Pte. Ltd., JPMorgan Chase Co. and Standard Chartered Bank.

This round of financing will be used to expand its settlement product range, including intraday foreign exchange swaps, cross-currency repurchases, and securities delivery payments.

Partior was founded in 2021 as part of the Ubin project led by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which aims to explore the use of blockchain and distributed ledger technology for clearing and settlement of payments and securities.

Tapi

On July 12, according to Bloomberg, Argentine fintech company Tapi completed a $20 million Series A financing round, led by Kaszek and participated by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Tapi co-founder and CEO Tomas Mindlin said the company is expanding its business in Mexico.

Tapi is a payment processor for large Latin American consumer platforms such as Mercado Pago and crypto trading platform Lemon. The company expects to process about $400 million in payments this year in the five countries where it operates, and to grow fourfold by 2023. The company has about 70 employees, most of whom are based in Argentina. The CEO said it expects total payment volume to grow fivefold by the end of this year to 10 million transactions per month. Tapi's payment processing technology is designed to help fintech companies serve customers in multiple countries.

Tapi's name comes from Mindlin's first startup project, a digital wallet called TAP, and the technology that supports the current system called an API (application programming interface).

Digital Asset Management/Payments The rest of the financing includes:

On July 10, crypto payment startup Kulipa announced the completion of a $3 million seed round of financing earlier this month, led by Fabric Ventures and White Star Capital. It is reported that Kulipa, headquartered in Paris, was founded in 2023 to provide non-custodial wallets with the purpose of issuing crypto payment cards. Kulipa can settle stablecoin transactions on multiple blockchains and is one of the five blockchain startups in Mastercard's latest Start Path incubator program.

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On July 11, Tanzanian fintech startup Nala completed a $40 million Series A financing round, led by Acrew Capital, with participation from DST Global, Norrsken22 and HOF Capital. The funds raised will be used to strengthen Nala's B2B payment platform and support its overall development plan. Nala launched its B2B product in March this year, mainly targeting businesses that pay to Africa and outside Africa.

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Web3+AI

A total of 2 financings were raised in the Web3+AI field, with a total amount of over 131.5 million US dollars, accounting for 43.29% of the total financing last week. Including:

On July 8, the decentralized AI agent workflow network Questflow Labs announced the completion of a $1.5 million angel round of financing, led by MiraclePlus, with participation from PAKA, AgentLayer, TypoX AI, Dmail Network, Litentry and Chasm. It is reported that Questflow Labs is exploring new directions in decentralized AI agent workflows, aiming to provide users with an integrated solution for user intent perception and distribution, AI agent workflow automation, and artificial intelligence and human collaboration.

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On July 9, artificial intelligence startup Hebbia completed a $130 million financing, led by a16z, with participation from Index Ventures, Google Ventures and billionaire Peter Thiel. According to a person familiar with the matter, the New York-based company is currently valued at approximately $700 million. Hebbia plans to use the new funds for research and to hire more software engineers. Founded in 2020, Hebbia uses artificial intelligence technology to help companies screen various documents to answer complex questions. Its clients include the U.S. Air Force, asset management companies, and legal services companies.

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