Highlights of this issue
The activity in the primary crypto market decreased last week, with on-chain transactions and Web3 AI continuing to attract capital. According to incomplete statistics from PANews, last week (6.29-7.5) there were 9 financing events in the global blockchain space, with a total funding scale exceeding $506 million, as summarized below:
- DeFi has announced 3 financing events, among which the on-chain perpetual contract exchange Extended completed a strategic financing of $12.5 million, led by eToro;
- Web3+AI has announced 3 financing events, with privacy-first AI platform Venice AI completing $65 million in Series A funding, achieving a post-money valuation of $1 billion;
- Prediction markets have reported 1 financing event, with prediction market index provider Adjacent completing $2.5 million in Pre-Seed funding, with participation from VanEck and others;
- Centralized finance has announced 1 financing event, as Lion Group plans to invest up to $12 million in Indonesian stablecoin developer PT Nusantara Bumi Sangkara;
- Others have announced 1 financing event, with Ionic Digital completing approximately $400 million in private equity financing, led by Attestor.
DeFi
Digital broker eToro announced it led the $12.5 million strategic financing for on-chain perpetual contract exchange Extended, with Jump Crypto and Alber Blanc participating. eToro plans to directly integrate Extended's perpetual contract engine into the previously acquired self-custodial wallet Zengo for $70 million, allowing users to trade on-chain derivatives while retaining asset custody rights, and will introduce a broader range of DeFi products to the core platform in the future. Extended is led by Ruslan Fakhrutdinov, former head of crypto at Revolut, and as of June, it has processed over $245 billion in trading volume, supports over 100 perpetual markets, and plans to expand into spot trading, tokenized RWAs, and multi-asset collateral.
Blockchain-based private lending platform Techdollar completes $3 million Pre-Seed round financing
Blockchain-based private lending platform Techdollar announced it has completed a $3 million Pre-Seed round financing, with investors including NoLimit Holdings, Reforge VC, as well as individual investors like Newmichwill, RoyLearner, and Ansem. Techdollar is a blockchain-based private lending platform that allows founders, employees, venture capitalists, and family offices to obtain loans secured by equity in private tech companies without having to sell shares. The platform uses a stablecoin-like issuance mechanism and integrates with on-chain liquidity infrastructure to provide rapid capital access while maintaining off-chain custody and compliant underwriting processes.
The decentralized exchange Arcus, developed by the dYdX team, has officially launched on Robinhood Chain, offering 24/7 trading of 95 types of tokenized stocks and perpetual contracts with zero fees. Arcus supports tokenized trading of stocks, commodities, indices, and crypto assets, with all tokenized stocks issued by Robinhood Chain and redeemable, allowing for self-custody and access to the DeFi ecosystem. Robinhood Crypto has invested in Arcus. Future plans for Arcus include supporting tokenized stocks and crypto assets as collateral for perpetual contracts and offering Pre-IPO trading for popular private companies like OpenAI.
Web3+AI
Venice AI obtains $65 million in Series A funding, valuation reaches $1 billion
Privacy-first AI platform Venice AI announced it has completed $65 million in Series A funding, achieving a post-money valuation of $1 billion, led by crypto venture fund Dragonfly, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and others. Venice AI was founded two years ago and provides access to over 200 open source and closed source models, claiming to be "unmonitored," with a focus on end-user encryption and no data retention. It currently has over 3 million monthly active users, approximately 1.7 million daily API calls, annual revenue exceeding $70 million, and is already profitable. The company plans to use this round of funding to purchase GPUs and build its own data center to reduce reliance on rental GPUs and improve gross margins.
Predictive behavior AI network THEA completes $8 million financing, led by Maven 11 Capital
Focusing on risk markets, predictive behavior AI network THEA has completed $8 million in financing to build its Solana-based coordination layer and expand AI infrastructure. This round of financing is led by Maven11 Capital, Spartan Group, ManifoldTrading, HackVC, and Fisher8 Capital.
THEA was established in 2024 and is headquartered in the Cayman Islands, with its AI models trained on more than 35 billion data points from real-world decision-making. Its core product provides predictive behavior AI for risk markets. The company plans to introduce THEA Network—a coordination layer that routes inference requests and settles transactions on Solana while keeping large data processing off-chain. THEA also plans to introduce utility tokens to tokenize access to its autonomous system.
Kled AI, an AI data marketplace in the Solana ecosystem, announced it has received $3 million in investment from The Data Foundation, increasing its total financing to $14 million. Kled AI aims to build a human data marketplace, where users contribute data by uploading files through its consumer applications. The platform has collected over 12,000 structured datasets, covering self-centered data, medical data, urban travel data, etc., available for purchase by AI labs and businesses for model training.
Prediction Markets
Prediction market index provider Adjacent announced it has completed $2.5 million in Pre-Seed financing, with investors including Night Capital, VanEck, UFO Holdings, Maven11, and DCG. Adjacent is an independent third-party provider of event contracts and prediction market indices, and has launched the U.S. election index series RED and BLUE this week. Adjacent stated it is rapidly expanding its index products to cover global elections, finance, economy, and more.
Others
Bitcoin mining company Ionic Digital completes $400 million in private financing
Ionic Digital has completed approximately $400 million in private financing prior to its direct listing on Nasdaq under the ticker symbol IOND, led by Attestor, Oaktree Capital Management, and Sachem Head Capital Management. The company sold approximately 7.55 million shares of Series A convertible preferred stock at $53 per share, and issued three tranches of warrants, each entitling holders to purchase approximately 1.01 million shares of Class A common stock at exercise prices of $63.60, $74.20, and $87.45, respectively. The preferred stock will automatically convert to Class A common stock upon listing on Nasdaq or completion of other qualified public trading. Investors have agreed not to transfer any shares of preferred stock, converted common stock, and related warrants and warrant shares at a price lower than $70 per share within six months after the listing, except in limited circumstances.
Centralized Finance
Nasdaq-listed Lion Group Holding Ltd. plans to invest up to $12 million in Indonesian fintech company PT Nusantara Bumi Sangkara through Meili Capital Management Ltd., in exchange for a 10% indirect economic interest in the company via the issuance of ordinary shares or equity-linked securities, with no cash payment involved. Nusantara Bumi Sangkara is developing the Indonesian rupiah stablecoin NIDR, pegged at a 1:1 ratio to the Indonesian rupiah and backed by reserve assets, aimed at reducing cross-border payment costs and supporting blockchain financial services. The company has obtained regulatory approval or confirmation from the Indonesian Financial Services Authority and is expected to become one of the first compliant stablecoin issuers in the country.
Acquisition
Sunscreen acquired by Fhenix, team will continue to advance FHE technology
Privacy computing project Sunscreen has announced its acquisition by Fhenix. Sunscreen stated that it has focused on cryptographic research and development for the past four years and is optimistic about the Fhenix team's execution capabilities on fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) infrastructure, believing they are better suited to bring production-grade FHE to market. After the acquisition, the Sunscreen team will join Fhenix, and the related code will continue to be provided under the AGPL open-source license.
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