This week's funding weekly report shows a total of 17 projects raising $443 million, with the most eye-catching being Payward's $200 million large financing round, backed by Deutsche Börse Group. Payward is building infrastructure integration for the crypto ecosystem, covering trading, custody, payments, and lending, claiming to hold licenses in over 190 jurisdictions, which is indeed a significant scale.

Seed-stage projects are also quite interesting. Claw Intelligence is working on AI intelligence analysis, aiming to turn fragmented on-chain data into actionable insights, raising $3 million. KieDex offers high-leverage perpetual contracts using an trading-as-mining model, raising $3.5 million. Nava Labs specializes in on-chain verification middleware for AI Agents, which is a somewhat novel idea, raising $8.3 million. Pumpcade is building a meme coin factory on Solana, with $5 million in funding. Mirage focuses on privacy stablecoin transfers, emphasizing compliance and low friction.

Other rounds also feature numerous projects. Spektr raised $20 million in Series A for AI-driven compliance automation. Slash, a digital bank for online businesses, raised $100 million in Series C. ZenGo was acquired by eToro for $70 million, marking a decent exit for this MPC wallet. Brix is bringing institutional strategies onto the chain through structured products. OpenGradient is working on decentralized AI model deployment, and Fluent Labs is developing an Ethereum Layer 2 execution environment, all of which are quite hardcore infrastructure projects.

Overall, the funding this week is quite diversified, spanning from AI Agents to privacy protocols, from DeFi to digital banking, indicating that capital is deploying across various directions. While the $200 million financing round is eye-catching, the seed-stage projects below actually reveal more about future development trends.