Funding Weekly Report | Korean Crypto Exchanges Become Hot Targets for Acquisitions; Stablecoin Settlement Bank Augustus Raises $180 million in Funding

This Week’s Highlights

Since 2025, the crypto venture capital market as a whole has still been operating at a low level, but top institutions have not fully exited. Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, a16z crypto, Tether, and others continue to accumulate for intensive positioning, with capital becoming more concentrated on early-stage project selection and structural opportunities.

Meanwhile, funding enthusiasm in the DeFi sector continues to cool. VC investment in DeFi has declined for three consecutive quarters. In Q2 2026, funding rounds fell to the lowest level since 2020, and investment amounts this quarter also dropped to a low point since Q4 2023. DeFi funding is entering a more clearly inventory-based selection phase.

Last week, multiple large rounds of financing continued to appear in the AI and robotics fields. AMD and Anthropic reached an agreement on AI chip and compute capacity collaboration, with AMD planning to invest up to $5 billion in phases into the latter. AI cloud computing platform Fluidstack completed a $830 million Series A round at a $7.5 billion valuation. AI chip startup Etched completed a $300 million Series C round, with post-investment valuation rising to $10.3 billion. In robotics, Atoms, backed by Travis Kalanick’s firm, raised $1.7 billion, while Humanoid, a UK humanoid robotics company, secured a $152 million Series A round.

At the same time, last week’s warmth in the crypto primary market cooled sharply. Based on incomplete statistics from PANews, in the week (7.20–7.26) there were 7 blockchain investment and financing events globally, with total funding exceeding $206 million. Disclosed funding rounds and total financing amounts both dropped significantly. Overview is as follows:

• The DeFi sector announced 1 investment and financing event: non-custodial fixed-rate lending platform Tenor completed a seed round, led by Variant;
• In the infrastructure & tools category, 3 investment and financing events were announced. Among them, Canton developer Digital Asset completed an additional $10 million financing at a $2 billion valuation;
• In the centralized finance sector, 2 investment and financing events were announced. Stablecoin clearing bank Augustus completed $180 million financing at a $1 billion valuation, led by Tiger Global;
• In prediction markets, 1 investment and financing event was announced: prediction market K25.ai completed a Series A round with its valuation doubling to $200 million, receiving strategic support from Amber Group;
• In addition, South Korea’s Mirae Asset also completed the acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit.

Crypto Financing

DeFi

Fixed-rate lending protocol Tenor completes seed round financing, Variant leads

Non-custodial fixed-rate lending platform Tenor announced it has completed a seed round led by Variant, with Nascent participating. Prelude, Coinbase Ventures, Lattice, Very Early, and multiple angel investors continue to add further support. The financing amount has not been disclosed for now. Tenor is built on Morpho’s fixed-rate lending base layer protocol Midnight. It is already live on the Base network, and will later expand to more chains, supporting features such as auto-rollover, OTC quotes, and floating-rate interest on pending orders. The platform currently supports collateralized crypto asset lending, and plans to expand into FX and credit markets.

Infrastructure & Tools

Canton developer Digital Asset completes an additional $10 million financing at a $2 billion valuation

Canton blockchain network developer Digital Asset has raised an additional $10 million from South Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group and SC Ventures of Standard Chartered Bank. As a result, its total amount in its most recent round increased from $355 million to $365 million. This round still values equity at $2 billion.

Canton Network developed by Digital Asset is a public Layer1 blockchain designed for regulated financial institutions. It allows institutions to manage assets and financial workflows on-chain while maintaining compliance and privacy control. The $355 million financing announced last month was led by a16z Crypto, with participating investors including ABN Amro, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Hanwha Investment & Securities, HSBC, S&P Global, and SBI Group, among others.

Financial infrastructure platform Cordant completes $8 million seed round financing, Motive Partners and Oak HC/FT jointly lead

Cordant, a provider of stablecoin and digital-asset financial infrastructure services, announced it has completed an $8 million seed round, co-led by Motive Partners and Oak HC/FT. Participating investors include Bankless VC, FJ Labs, SignalFire, Quona, Next Stage, Selah Ventures, Flatironx, Nascent Ventures, Silvercircle Ventures, and Generative Ventures. The new funds will support its introduction of new payment networks and AI automation tools. Cordant is working with financial institutions on product co-building collaborations spanning banks, payments, embedded finance, cross-border transactions, stablecoins, and digital assets. Among them, Latin American digital-asset and payments platform Bitso and blockchain infrastructure company Paxos both participated as investors and design partners.

Memecoin.Fun completes a $3.5 million Series A round

Token issuance and Memecoin Launchpad platform Memecoin.Fun announced it has completed a $3.5 million Series A round at an about $50k,000 valuation. This round was led by Becker Ventures, with participation from BitValue Capital, Negentropy Capital, Mason Labs, and Billy Wen. The project is positioned as a meme token issuance and launch platform within the Robinhood Chain ecosystem, aiming to provide one-stop issuance and launch services for developers and project teams.

Centralized Finance

Stablecoin clearing bank Augustus completes $180 million financing at a $1 billion valuation, Tiger Global leads

Stablecoin clearing bank startup Augustus completed $180 million in funding, with a post-investment valuation of $1 billion. The round was led by Tiger Global, with participation from Hummingbird, QED, and founders including Nubank, Ramp, Circle, and Deel. The company received conditional approval for a national bank license from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in the US. It plans to expand US dollar clearing, while also expanding customers across Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Augustus does not issue its own stablecoins. Instead, it builds “AI-native” clearing infrastructure that connects traditional payment systems and blockchain networks. It supports programmable, 24/7 stablecoin settlement. It is already providing euro clearing through licensed entities in Finland, handling tens of billions of euros annually, and serving institutional clients such as Kraken.

Stablecoin issuer Mandela Digital completes $5 million funding, Datavault AI participates

Stablecoin issuer Mandela Digital announced it has completed $5 million in funding, with Datavault AI participating. The new funds will be used for stablecoin infrastructure building, compliance, exchange integrations, liquidity, and market promotion, as well as accelerating the launch of a 1:1 pegged USD stablecoin, Mandela Dollar (MUSD). It is understood that Datavault AI will also provide technical support for MUSD, including an AI platform, blockchain tokenization, SanQtum anti-quantum cryptography, and a real-world assets (RWA) framework.

Prediction Markets

Prediction market K25.ai completes Series A financing with valuation doubling to $200 million, receives strategic support from Amber Group

AI-native live-stream prediction market K25.ai announced it has completed a Series A round and received strategic support from Amber Group. Post-investment valuation reached $200 million, and the valuation doubled in less than 60 days. This round of investment will accelerate K25.ai’s product development, global expansion, institutional liquidity infrastructure, and creator ecosystem building. Amber Group will provide support to K25.ai across market infrastructure, liquidity strategies, ecosystem development, and digital assets.

K25.ai combines AI with live-stream content, enabling users to predict in real time the direction of sports, esports, entertainment, and other scenarios. Through its own AI infrastructure, it generates real-time markets, monitors content, and adjudicates results. Previously, its Pre-A round was led by NewGenIVF Group, a Nasdaq-listed company.

Acquisitions

SBI Holdings acquires Singapore crypto exchange Coinhako

Japanese financial group SBI Holdings has obtained the necessary approvals from the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and completed the acquisition of licensed Singapore crypto exchange and digital wallet Coinhako. Coinhako is regulated by Singapore and provides digital-asset trading and custody services.

Mirae Asset Korea completes acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit

Mirae Asset Korea has completed the acquisition of local crypto exchange Korbit. Korbit said that its operating entity, user deposits, and personal data processing remain unchanged. Previously, on July 9, it was reported that Mirae Asset Group was approved to acquire 92.06% of Korbit for 133.4 billion Korean won.

Unserious acquires NFT project Creepz, supported by Adam Weitsman

Brand operations company Unserious announced it has acquired NFT project Creepz, and received support from Adam Weitsman. The Creepz founding team will continue to provide assistance during the transition period. Unserious’s team previously led strategic planning for the issuance of key crypto tokens in the sector, such as ApeCoin. After this acquisition, artist @psychrome will return to serve as the IP development and creative direction lead. Its commercial collaboration experience includes Nike, Salomon, Sneaker Con, Staple, Disney, Warner Bros., and Rovio. The transaction amount has not been disclosed.

AI & Robotics Financing Picks

AI

AMD will invest $5 billion into Anthropic; both sides reach an AI chip cooperation agreement

AMD and Anthropic signed an AI server and investment agreement covering “multiple billions of dollars.” Under the agreement, starting in the first half of 2027, Anthropic will procure up to 2 gigawatts of compute capacity scale of AMD’s next-generation Instinct MI450 chips for building AI server clusters. In exchange, AMD will invest in phases up to $5 billion into Anthropic—AMD’s first direct investment in this AI company.

Cloud computing startup Fluidstack completes $830 million Series A financing at a $7.5 billion valuation

Fluidstack, a cloud computing startup focusing on AI compute leasing (Neocloud), announced that it completed an $830 million Series A financing in January at a $7.5 billion valuation. The round was led by a fund of Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher, with multiple investors participating. According to the company, Fluidstack builds infrastructure for AI labs and aims to become the company that deploys hundreds of gigawatts of computing capacity fastest globally.

AI chip startup Etched completes $300 million Series C financing; post-investment valuation reaches $10.3 billion

AI chip startup Etched completed a $300 million Series C financing round led by Sequoia, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz, SK hynix, Jane Street, and Diffusion Capital. Post-investment valuation is $10.3 billion, doubling from the $5 billion valuation in December last year. Etched was founded in 2022 by three Harvard dropout students. It designs chips specifically for AI models based on the Transformer architecture. The company said it has successfully manufactured its own chips and has been tested by customers, and has obtained $1 billion worth of orders.

Etched introduced two new components for the inference process: prefill chips operate at lower voltages to greatly improve speed and reduce heat, and decode chips use cluster-level memory technology to enable shared memory pools across chips. Etched currently has 400 employees, operates 2MW data centers, and has opened an 80k-square-foot, 10MW facility in Milpitas.

AI security control platform Neo completes $100 million financing, led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners

Neo, a company founded by former SentinelOne executives, announced it completed $100 million in financing led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, with Craft Ventures and Merlin Ventures participating. Neo positions itself as an “Agentic Software Control” platform. It provides enterprise SecOps teams with AI agents, AI applications, browsers, real-time inventory of identities and traditional software, capability and risk intelligence, behavior attribution, and fine-grained strategy controls—enabling native interception of high-risk actions and malicious models. Gartner expects the proportion of enterprise applications with agentic capabilities to rise from 5% in 2025 to 40% by 2026. Neo plans to use this round of funding to accelerate product development and market expansion, helping enterprises improve security governance while adopting AI agents at scale.

TYLsemi raises $43 million to advance an AI chip full-stack platform

AI infrastructure chiplet platform company TYLsemi announced it has completed a $43 million early-stage financing round, led by Matter Venture Partners, with participation from Viola Ventures, GHOVC, Egis Technology, and others. The company has launched a standardized chiplet package covering IO interconnects, power management, and memory. It also provides customized XPU design and packaging based on chiplets, as well as an integrated supply-chain service. The company claims it can reduce the time and cost of taking customized AI chips from architecture to mass production by up to 50%. The first batch includes TYL.IO for high-bandwidth interconnects such as PCIe, ESUN, and UALink; TYL.Power, an integrated voltage regulation chiplet for XPU; and a planned memory connectivity product, TYL.Mem. It provides customized AI silicon solutions for top clients through its full-stack platform, TYL.Forge.

Infinity raises $15 million to build universal AI inference software to counter Nvidia’s ecosystem

AI infrastructure company Infinity announced it has completed a $15 million funding round, with a post-investment valuation of $100 million. Investors include Touring Capital, Principal VC, and researchers from companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. Infinity is developing a universal AI inference computing library that can run on a variety of chips, including GPUs, SRAM, and mobile chipsets. The goal is to provide a universal kernel software that can replace Nvidia CUDA. Its AI research agent, Ignition, can automatically generate, test, and optimize low-level inference code for non-Nvidia chips. It charges based on performance improvements and cost savings. It is already serving AI chip provider D-Matrix and is in talks with multiple chipmakers and cloud providers for partnerships.

Robotics

Robotics company Atoms completes $1.7 billion financing, led by a16z

Robotics company Atoms, owned by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, completed a $1.7 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Ben Horowitz will join the board. Equity investors in this round include Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group, and Uber. Horowitz said the investment logic focuses on dedicated robots rather than humanoid robots. He noted that in heavy industry, dedicated robots are far more suitable for completing most tasks than humanoid robots.

UK robotics company Humanoid completes $152 million Series A financing; post-investment valuation $1.35 billion

UK robotics startup Humanoid announced it has completed $152 million in Series A financing, with a post-investment valuation of $1.35 billion. Total cumulative financing has reached $270 million, making it Europe’s first “unicorn” focused on humanoid robotics. Prime Movers Lab led this round, with participation from Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding’s venture capital arm, and Aglaé Ventures, among others. Humanoid has signed an order for 1,000 robots with Schaeffler and, with Bosch support, has obtained production capacity of 100k units over the next five years. Its flagship product is the wheeled humanoid robot HMND 01, primarily targeting logistics, manufacturing, and retail scenarios, and plans to launch 3 to 6 month commercial pilots at customer sites starting by the end of the year. The company also self-develops a four-layer AI platform, KinetIQ, to coordinate robot clusters to execute industrial tasks.