Highlights of this issue
In September 2026, there were 61 public financing projects in the encryption field, a decrease of 1.6% month-on-month and a year-on-year decrease of 35.1%; the total financing amount was approximately US$1.269 billion, a month-on-month increase of 71.1% and a year-on-year decrease of 79.2%.
The financing and strategic investments disclosed in the crypto field in this issue are still mainly financial service-related projects, covering perpetual contract transactions, institutional transactions, stablecoin payments, prediction markets, corporate finance, and DePIN.
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 10 investment and financing events in the global blockchain industry last week (9.28-10.4), with the total capital scale exceeding US$159 million. The main financing events are as follows:
PERPTools disclosed two rounds of financing totaling US$8 million;
Financial technology company Jeeves completed US$110 million in Series C financing, led by CoinFund, with participation from a16z, Coinbase Ventures and others;
Crypto corporate banking platform Limited completed $18.5 million in seed round financing, with participation from DCG and others;
Raven receives strategic financing from Coinbase Ventures and CMCC Global, valuing it at US$90 million
In terms of AI financing, capital is still concentrated on both the model and infrastructure ends. SoftBank completed a US$10 billion investment in OpenAI, AI infrastructure company Helix Digital Infrastructure received a US$1 billion investment from Samsung Group, and the AI native cloud platform GMI Cloud completed a US$668 million financing
In addition, in the first half of 2026, there were 1,255 artificial intelligence-related investments and financings in China, totaling approximately 250.14 billion yuan, reaching 78.0% and 182.0% respectively of the full year of 2025.
Crypto Financing
DeFi
PERPTools disclosed two rounds of financing totaling US$8 million, planning TGE in the fourth quarter
PERPTools, an AI sustainable trading platform built by DEXTools developers, has raised a total of US$8 million through two rounds of token financing, including a US$3 million pre-seed round and a US$5 million seed round. Participating investors include BigBrain Holdings, NEAR, Animoca Brands, Sfermion and Shima Capital. The platform plans to conduct TGE in the fourth quarter of 2026.
Hyperliquid broker HyperLink completes US$2.5 million in financing, with participation from Alliance and others
HyperLink, the prime broker agreement of the decentralized trading platform Hyperliquid, announced the completion of US$2.5 million in financing, with participation from Alliance, North Island Ventures, Reverie, Node Capital, Breed and smartestmoney.hl.
HyperLink aims to unlock VIP rates by aggregating transaction volume and staking, providing users with low handling fees, private transaction flows and optimal execution paths. Data shows that the routing transaction volume of the platform reached US$254 million last month, accounting for 0.1% of Hyperliquid's total transaction volume. Currently, the agreement is in the invitation-only stage and has accounted for 1% of the transaction volume of Hyperliquid builders.
Stablecoin payment
Fintech company Jeeves completes US$110 million in Series C financing
Miami financial technology company Jeeves completed a $110 million Series C round of financing, led by CoinFund, with participation from a16z, Coinbase Ventures, AllianceBernstein and others. The funds will be used for stablecoin wallet infrastructure construction, AI Agent automation and the expansion of instant payment services to more than 25 countries. Currently, about 50% to 60% of the company's international payments have been settled through stablecoins such as USDC and EURC.
Payment infrastructure Walapay completes $4.6 million in seed round financing
Payment infrastructure Walapay announced the completion of a $4.6 million seed round of financing, led by Gen Venture Capital, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Polygon, AAF Management, Verda Ventures, NGC Ventures, FGV Capital, JSquare, Reflexive, Big Brain VC and others. Walapay said this round of funding will be used to acquire more licenses, expand banking cooperation, and expand its team.
prediction market
Raven receives strategic financing from Coinbase Ventures and CMCC Global, valuing it at US$90 million
Raven completed a round of strategic financing with participation from Coinbase Ventures and CMCC Global, with a pre-money valuation of US$90 million. Raven was founded in 2023, initially as a crypto high-frequency market maker, and expanded to prediction markets starting in the second quarter of 2025, providing institutional market making services for platforms such as Kalshi, Polymarket, and other non-U.S. compliance or on-chain platforms. Raven has provided liquidity for more than 3,000 contracts, covering categories such as sports, cryptocurrency, macroeconomics, and entertainment. CMCC co-founder Charlie Morris will join Raven’s board of directors to assist with its expansion among institutional clients. The specific amount of financing was not disclosed.
Centralized Finance
Crypto corporate banking platform Limited completed US$18.5 million in seed round financing, with participation from DCG and others
Crypto corporate banking platform Limited announced the completion of a US$18.5 million seed round of financing, led by Third Prime, North Island Ventures (NIV), The House Fund, and Collab+Currency, with participation from ParaFi Capital, Pharsalus Capital, Digital Currency Group (DCG), 1982 Ventures, and Onigiri Capital.
It is reported that Limited is a global financial platform for multinational companies, integrating local corporate accounts, Visa cards, payments, treasury and expense management and encryption infrastructure. Enterprises can receive and receive payments through local channels such as ACH, SEPA, Pix, and SWIFT, and also support the sending and receiving of encrypted assets such as BTC, ETH, and USDC.
Brazilian financial technology company NG.CASH completed strategic financing of US$15 million, led by Blockchain Capital
Brazilian financial technology company NG.CASH has completed strategic financing of US$15 million, led by Blockchain Capital. The company's total financing since its establishment in 2021 has exceeded US$65 million. According to reports, NG.CASH holds two licenses for direct credit companies and payment institutions issued by the Central Bank of Brazil, and is applying for a virtual asset service provider license. Since its establishment in 2021, the number of NG.CASH accounts has exceeded 10 million, and the platform transaction volume has reached billions of dollars.
Depository Depository and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) makes strategic investment in iCapital
The Depository and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and iCapital announced a strategic cooperation to jointly promote private market infrastructure. DTCC also made a strategic investment in iCapital. The two parties will integrate DTCC's market infrastructure, processing capabilities and network with iCapital's technology platform and investment workflow to connect data, operations and market participants in the private investment life cycle and reduce operational friction. As an initial area of cooperation, the two parties plan to further integrate DTCC's alternative investment products (AIP) with iCapital's alternative investment platform, and explore the application of technologies such as blockchain DLT and tokenization in the private market. Talia Klein, head of wealth and investment solutions at DTCC, will join the iCapital board of directors as an observer.
DePIN
Multicoin Capital announces investment in DePIN project Grass
Shayon Sengupta, general partner of Multicoin Capital, announced in a post that his hedge funds and venture capital funds have invested in the DePIN project Grass. Grass recruits global contributors to share idle bandwidth through an encrypted incentive mechanism, build a decentralized network, and provide pre-training data for AI cutting-edge laboratories. Having served multiple laboratories in the past 18 months, Grass has achieved revenue of US$17 million in 2025 and the first half of 2026 respectively, and is expected to achieve US$75 million in revenue from the training data business alone for the full year, and the business has become profitable. Over 6 million contributors receive USD-denominated rewards.
SocialFi
Social finance platform KIVO receives $5 million in early funding from BitBT Ventures
BitBT Ventures announced on the X platform that it has provided $5 million in early financing to social finance platform KIVO. KIVO is building a social financial ecosystem that connects social, transaction, payment, digital assets and emerging financial products through a single consumer-grade application.
BitBT Ventures stated that it supports KIVO in building a social layer and full-stack SocialFi infrastructure for the next generation of users. The relevant content was posted by its social media account and mentioned the KIVO account KivoSocialLayer.
AI Financing Featured
Models & Infrastructure
SoftBank completes third round of $10 billion investment in OpenAI
According to the Financial Associated Press, SoftBank completed its third round of investment of US$10 billion in OpenAI.
AI infrastructure company Helix Digital receives $1 billion investment from Samsung Group
Helix Digital Infrastructure, an American AI infrastructure company, announced that it has received a US$1 billion investment from Samsung Group. Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI and other companies of Samsung Group participated in the investment. Helix was jointly established by KKR in June this year in conjunction with the Kuwait Investment Authority, Nvidia and US power producer Vistra. It is operated by former Amazon Cloud Technology CEO Adam Selipsky. Its business covers semiconductors, data centers, cloud computing and finance. This investment will also enable Samsung Group to further expand its presence in the AI infrastructure market.
AI native cloud platform GMI Cloud completes US$668 million in financing, NVIDIA participates in investment
The AI native cloud platform GMI Cloud announced the completion of US$668 million in financing, including US$223 million in Series B equity financing and US$445 million in credit financing. The investment company ARCHIV led the investment and NVIDIA participated. The company said its inference platform processes approximately 4 trillion tokens per week, and its customers include Fireworks, Nous Research, OpenRouter, Trend Micro, etc.
AI Application&Agent
AI assistant startup Instinct completes US$1 billion in Series C financing, valued at US$10 billion
AI assistant startup Instinct completed a $1 billion Series C round of financing from investors including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital and Coatue, with a valuation of $10 billion. This comes just one month after the company announced the completion of financing at a valuation of $2.5 billion a month ago.
Instinct is a new type of consumer-grade AI agent that can not only answer questions and hold conversations, but also complete practical tasks for users, such as booking travel and restaurants, shopping, paying bills, canceling subscriptions, conducting research, and ordering groceries. Instinct uses text messages to communicate with users, does not yet have a mobile app, and has not released user data or growth metrics.
AI intelligent security company Reco received another US$55 million in financing, bringing the total financing to US$140 million.
Reco, an AI intelligent security company, announced that it has received US$55 million in financing, with participation from AT&T’s investment arm, Forestay and Quadrille Capital. Together with the US$30 million Series B financing completed in February this year, Reco’s cumulative financing reached US$140 million.
Reco's platform uses "context graphs" to associate enterprise AI agents, applications, accounts and permissions to help security teams discover unapproved agents and restrict their data access. The company says it currently has more than 100 customers and can be integrated with more than 280 applications; its annual recurring revenue reaches tens of millions of dollars, and financial services customers account for about 40% of the business. Funding from this round will be used for recruiting, sales, partnerships and customer support.
Physical AI
Physics AI chip company SiMa.ai completed US$150 million in Series C financing, with a valuation of US$1.45 billion
SiMa.ai, a physical AI chip company, announced the completion of a US$150 million Series C round of financing. This round was jointly led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, Point72, StepStone Group, etc. The company's cumulative financing reached US$500 million, and its valuation rose to US$1.45 billion. SiMa.ai said that this round of funds will be used to expand the scale of its physical AI platform Palette Neat and develop the next generation of dedicated physical AI chips, which is planned to be launched in the first half of 2028, with a computing power of up to 1,000 TOPS.
investment institutions
DIG Ventures completes US$120 million in third phase fund raising, focusing on Pre-seed and seed round AI infrastructure
Venture capital firm DIG Ventures announced that it has closed $120 million for its third fund. Funders include Horsley Bridge, Sofina, Granite and a top US university endowment, among others.
The fund will focus on AI-native enterprise software and cloud infrastructure startups in the pre-seed and seed-round stages, focusing on data, identity authentication, compliance and orchestration and other infrastructure directions that support the development of AI-native software. The fund plans to serve as the leading party in most investment rounds, and funds have already begun to be invested.