This Week's Highlights
Last week, crypto industry funding was concentrated in RWA liquidity infrastructure and stablecoin payments. According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 6 investment and financing events in the global blockchain industry last week (10.12-10.18), with total funding exceeding $54 million. Overview below:
Fission, a tokenized fund liquidity startup, announced the completion of a $10 million Series A round led by Pantera Capital;
Sui Foundation invested $30 million in AI data protocol DATA Network (formerly Story Protocol);
Multiliquid, a tokenized asset settlement platform, completed an $8 million funding round led by Polychain;
Stablecoin issuer Tether announced an investment in the seed round of Latin American financial infrastructure company EFY Finance to promote the institutional adoption of USD₮ and USA₮.
In the AI sector, DeepSeek's new funding round is planned to increase to approximately RMB 100 billion, with a pre-money valuation of approximately RMB 500 billion; AI infrastructure company Infinigence AI completed a RMB 2.3 billion Series C round, while SWI Group is using EUR 800 million in equity financing to drive the transformation of former Bitcoin mining farms into AI data centers, demonstrating continued capital investment in model R&D, computing services, and the retrofit of existing energy infrastructure.
In the embodied intelligence sector, AgiBot is reportedly advancing a RMB 1 billion to RMB 1.5 billion new funding round at a valuation of approximately RMB 50 billion, Ola Wanxiang completed a several-hundred-million-yuan angel+ round, and DeepSeek also plans to lead a tens-of-millions-of-dollars seed round in robotics AI startup Winverse AI, with a post-money valuation expected to be approximately $400 million.
Crypto Funding
RWA
Tokenized fund liquidity company Fission completes $10 million Series A led by Pantera Capital
Fission, a tokenized fund liquidity startup, announced the completion of a $10 million Series A round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Circle Ventures, Borderless Capital, and Ari Rubenstein. The financing was completed in September 2026. The platform allows investors to connect digital wallets and compress the process of selling tokenized fund shares—which originally took about 200 days—to within 90 seconds, enabling instant liquidity through fee collection. Its main clients are currently institutional investors, including hedge funds holding tokenized private credit or equity, crypto organizations, and stablecoin issuers.
Tokenized asset settlement platform Multiliquid completes $8 million funding round led by Polychain
Uniform Labs, the developer of tokenized asset settlement platform Multiliquid, has raised a cumulative $8 million across seed and pre-seed rounds, with the latest seed round led by Polychain and participation from Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, Circle Ventures, and others. Multiliquid supports institutions in converting between tokenized assets and stablecoins through a single atomic transaction and is currently deployed on Ethereum and Solana.
Tokenized US equities platform Spout completes $2 million strategic round with participation from Anchorage and others
Spout, a tokenized US equities collateralized lending platform, announced the completion of a $2 million strategic round with participation from Draper Dragon, Anchorage, Flow Traders, Taisu Ventures, Vessel VC, Solayer Labs, 2Square Capital, and Bering Waters, Solana Labs, Solana co-founder Toly, former CFTC Chairman Chris Giancarlo, and others. According to the product mechanism disclosed by Spout, users can collateralize tokenized US equities and borrow USDC at a fixed 50% loan-to-value ratio, with no interest charged to borrowers during the loan period. Lenders earn yield from premiums generated by weekly covered call options sold against the collateral, rather than from borrowing rates paid by borrowers.
Stablecoin Payments
Tether invests in EFY Finance to accelerate the adoption of USD₮ in Latin American institutional payment scenarios
Stablecoin issuer Tether announced an investment in the seed round of Latin American financial infrastructure company EFY Finance to promote the institutional adoption of USD₮ and USA₮. Tether stated that the investment aims to strengthen the connection between stablecoins and the traditional financial system and support EFY Finance in developing stablecoin-based cross-border payments, account services, and digital asset custody infrastructure.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said that multiple regions in Latin America face inflationary and capital control pressures, and USD stablecoins are becoming a tool for accessing USD liquidity, while compliant infrastructure and banking connectivity are key to expanding adoption. EFY Finance currently provides on/off-ramp services for USD₮ and USA₮, over-the-counter (OTC) trading, wallet, and payment card services, covering local settlement channels in more than 12 currencies and 17 countries. The company has obtained a digital asset service provider license in El Salvador and serves more than 25,000 individual and corporate accounts.
Web3+AI
Sui Foundation invests $30 million in DATA Network, protocol to migrate to Sui blockchain
Sui Foundation invested $30 million in AI data protocol DATA Network (formerly Story Protocol). The protocol will migrate to the Sui blockchain and become its native protocol, and its independent chain will be discontinued. Existing DATA tokens will migrate to the Sui network at a 1:1 ratio. Before the migration is completed, the existing DATA Network will continue to operate.
Web3 Applications
Intellectual property platform IPX completes $4 million seed round at a $125 million valuation
Intellectual property tokenization platform IPX announced the completion of a $4 million seed round at a $125 million valuation. The round was led by Bitsurge Holdings, with participation from YICIPX Holdings Family Office and a group of strategic investors. The company is headquartered in Miami, Florida, and its founder and CEO is Brendan McCafferty.
IPX's products are built on Base and include an intellectual property agent operating system, a tokenization issuance platform, and IPX Exchange, allowing creators to complete tokenization, advertising, monetization, and distribution within the same system. It plans to launch IPXOS, IPX Exchange, and the native token IPX on November 15, 2026, and said this financing is the beginning of a series of updates leading up to that date, with technical, partner, and first original project announcements to follow almost weekly thereafter.
FinTech
Ramp completes $1.85 billion new funding round at a $60 billion valuation
Ramp co-founder Eric Glyman posted that the company completed a $1.85 billion new funding round at a valuation of $60 billion. The round was co-led by Dragoneer Investment Group, Thrive Capital, Founders Fund, Sands Capital, and Avenir Growth. This financing comes just four months after its previous $750 million raise at a $44 billion valuation in June.
Previously, Ramp, a financial platform serving more than 70,000 businesses, launched a stablecoin on Solana, allowing businesses to hold USDC or USDT and conduct cross-border payments through existing bridges and accounting processes.
Selected AI Funding
Models & Infrastructure
DeepSeek to complete RMB 100 billion funding roundAccording to a report by Caijing magazine citing multiple people involved in the deal, large-model company DeepSeek will soon complete its latest funding round, with the amount raised increased from the previously planned RMB 50 billion to approximately RMB 100 billion. This is DeepSeek's second funding round, with the proposed investment amount doubling in less than half a month. The proposed investment amounts from new and existing shareholders are roughly equal. The doubling of the funding scale did not affect the overall valuation; DeepSeek's current pre-money valuation remains approximately RMB 500 billion. New investors in this round include Shixi Capital, SMIC Juyuan, CPE Yuanfeng, Legend Capital, Geely, and others, predominantly industrial investors.
SWI Group completes EUR 800 million financing to accelerate the transformation of Bitcoin mining farms into AI computing infrastructure
SWI Group has completed EUR 800 million (approximately USD 895 million) in financing to expand its AI infrastructure business. Previously, the company had acquired control of FTX-backed Bitcoin miner Genesis Digital Assets.
SWI Group said it will retrofit some of its Bitcoin mining facilities suitable for high-performance computing (HPC) for AI workload deployment. This move marks the company's transition from traditional crypto mining operations to the AI computing infrastructure sector. As demand for AI computing continues to grow, an increasing number of Bitcoin miners are exploring the migration of existing power, data center, and hardware resources to AI computing scenarios.
AI-native infrastructure company Infinigence AI completes RMB 2.3 billion Series C financing, cumulative financing exceeds RMB 4.3 billion
AI-native infrastructure company Infinigence AI has completed RMB 2.3 billion (approximately USD 344.2 million) in Series C financing, bringing its cumulative financing to over RMB 4.3 billion (approximately USD 643.6 million). Investors include Hangzhou High-tech Jintou, Social Security Zhongguancun Fund, Zhuhai Technology Industry Group, Xuhui Capital, Tencent, Baidu, Lenovo, as well as financial investment institutions such as Sequoia China, Qiming Venture Partners, and Shunwei Capital. Earlier in early October, the company had confidentially submitted an IPO application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, planning to raise several hundred million US dollars and list as early as the first half of 2027.
AI computing operator KONST completes USD 30 million Series B financing, led by ADATA Technology
AI computing operator KONST announced the completion of USD 30 million in Series B financing, led by ADATA Technology, with strategic participation from M Mobility, Pegatron Venture Capital, and others. The new funds will be used to expand its AI data center construction and accelerate its Token Factory strategy.
AI Applications & Agents
NVIDIA-backed AI drug discovery company Iambic raises USD 150 million in US IPO
NVIDIA-backed AI drug discovery company Iambic Therapeutics issued approximately 9.38 million shares at USD 16 per share, raising USD 150 million in its US IPO. The pricing was at the midpoint of the USD 15 to USD 17 range, corresponding to a market capitalization of approximately USD 758 million. The company is expected to begin trading on Nasdaq on October 15 under the ticker IAM, with proceeds to advance three early-stage cancer drug candidates. ARK and Druckenmiller's family office had indicated interest in subscribing for up to USD 60 million in aggregate.
AIsa completes seed extension financing, with Tether and HIVEN joining as strategic investors
Enterprise AI agent infrastructure company AIsa announced the completion of a seed extension financing round, with stablecoin issuer Tether and HIVEN joining as strategic investors. This round brings its cumulative financing to over USD 9 million. Tether and HIVEN join existing investors including Alibaba, Tribe Capital, Sumitomo Corporation, Draper Associates, and Saison Capital.
Jordan Liu, founder and CEO of AIsa, said the company will build infrastructure supporting global discovery, access, and payment for resources by AI agents. AIsa's network integrates resource discovery, access, and transactions, connecting enterprise AI agents with external data, AI search, models, APIs, software tools, and industry services, and provides permission management, usage metering, billing, and settlement.
Physical AI
Embodied intelligence company Ola Wanxiang completes several hundred million RMB angel+ round financing
Ola Wanxiang recently completed several hundred million RMB in angel+ round financing, jointly invested by Chengyuanxiang Fund, Xinneng Venture Capital, Xizhou International, Topband Co., Ltd., and Hony Capital, with Zhiguan Capital serving as exclusive financial advisor. The company was founded by Zhou Shunbo, a former Huawei "Genius Youth" and Huawei's No. 1 embodied intelligence employee. Established for just over half a year, it is building a Real-world RSI system for home service robots and has released a stage result, UniWAM, exploring ways for robots to continuously improve through real-world scenario feedback.
Zhiyuan launches new financing at RMB 50 billion valuation, IPO postponed
Embodied intelligence unicorn company Zhiyuan Innovation recently launched a new funding round of approximately RMB 1 billion to RMB 1.5 billion. The round is nearing completion, with the latest valuation at approximately RMB 50 billion. In July 2026, Zhiyuan announced the launch of preparations for a Hong Kong listing. At that time, an investor said Zhiyuan was expected to list as early as August, with a target valuation of HKD 40 billion to HKD 50 billion. According to relevant requirements of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, if a listing applicant completes new financing after submitting its application but before listing, unless a special exemption is obtained, the listing applicant must wait until 120 days after the completion of the financing before it can commence trading. The aforementioned investor said the new funding round means Zhiyuan cannot complete its IPO (initial public offering) within this year. Regarding the new financing, valuation, and IPO progress, a Zhiyuan spokesperson said there was no comment at this time.
DeepSeek plans to lead investment in startup founded by former Tencent AI scientist, Winverse AI valuation may reach USD 400 million
AI research institution DeepSeek plans to lead the seed round financing of robotics AI startup Winverse AI, with an investment scale in the tens of millions of US dollars. Sources said Winverse AI was founded by a former top AI scientist at Tencent and is currently operating in stealth mode. In addition to DeepSeek, investors including Meituan's investment arm Long-Z Investments also participated in this round. After the investment is completed, the company's valuation will be approximately USD 400 million.
DeepSeek will use part of its more than USD 12 billion in financing funds to support this investment, betting on the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence and robotics technology. This investment shows that DeepSeek's strategic direction is extending further from large language models to Embodied AI. As AI model capabilities advance toward real-world interaction and robot control, robotics AI has become a new focus of industry competition.