Highlights of this episode
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 10 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (February 16-22), with a total funding scale exceeding US$143 million. An overview is as follows:
- In the DeFi sector, one investment and financing event was announced: MYX, an on-chain derivatives protocol, completed a strategic financing round led by Consensys.
- One investment and financing event was announced in the Web3+AI sector: Unicity Labs completed a $3 million seed round of financing, led by Blockchange Ventures;
- Three investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure & tools sector, including Kresus Labs, a digital wallet infrastructure company, which completed a $13 million funding round.
- The prediction market sector announced three investment and financing events, including Novig, a sports prediction market, which completed a $75 million Series B financing round led by Pantera Capital.
- Two investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector, including Stake completing a $31 million Series B financing round led by the National Bank of the UAE;
DeFi
MYX completes strategic financing led by Consensys
On-chain derivatives protocol MYX has completed a strategic funding round led by Consensys, with participation from Consensys Mesh and Systemic Ventures, laying the foundation for the launch of MYX V2. Following this round, Consensys officially becomes MYX's largest investor, and the funds will be used to support the deployment of MYX's modular derivatives settlement engine.
AI
Unicity Labs raises $3 million in seed funding, led by Blockchange Ventures.
Unicity Labs, a company developing autonomous internet protocols, announced the completion of a $3 million seed funding round led by Blockchange Ventures, with participation from Middle Eastern communications app Tawasal and Web3 early-stage investment firm Outlier Ventures. The company plans to use the new funds to build a peer-to-peer encrypted architecture that enables autonomous AI agents to discover services, verify counterparties, and conduct transactions at machine speed, without the need for intermediaries or shared ledgers.
Saudi Humain invests $3 billion in xAI
Saudi Arabia-backed artificial intelligence company Humain has invested $3 billion in Elon Musk's AI startup xAI. The statement said that Humain becomes a "significant minority shareholder" in xAI through this investment, which comes just before Musk's SpaceX acquired the company. Humain's shares will be converted into SpaceX shares. This investment strengthens the ties between Musk and Humain. Founded last year, the company aims to make Saudi Arabia a leading AI nation. The two companies plan to develop a 500-megawatt data center in Saudi Arabia.
(This financing event is not included in this week's weekly report statistics)
AI agent startup Temporal raises $300 million in Series D funding, led by a16z.
AI agent startup Temporal announced the completion of a $300 million Series D funding round, valuing the company at $5 billion. The round was led by a16z, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures, and Sequoia Capital. According to the company, this funding round was not intended to "chase a hot trend in artificial intelligence," but rather to build a platform to address the reliability challenges commonly faced by AI agents in complex, long-running processes. Current users include AI companies like OpenAI, Snap, Netflix, and JPMorgan Chase.
(This financing event is not included in this week's statistics.)
Infrastructure & Tools
Digital wallet infrastructure provider Kresus Labs raises $13 million.
Digital wallet infrastructure provider Kresus Labs announced the completion of a $13 million (approximately 18 billion Korean won) funding round, with participation from Hanwha Investment & Securities. The new funds will be used to expand its enterprise digital wallet infrastructure, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization platform and on-chain finance workflows, as well as to build digital asset development tools for consumers and institutions, including wallet recovery technology and multi-party computation (MPC) based security systems.
Monark Markets completes $8 million strategic funding round, led by F-Prime.
Monark Markets, an embedded API infrastructure provider, announced the completion of an $8 million strategic funding round led by F-Prime, with participation from Commerce Ventures, Grit Capital Partners, and BBAE Holdings. The company's API infrastructure powers fintech platforms such as Apex Fintech Solutions and Altruist Financial, embedding private market investments directly into existing customer accounts, which can drive investment demand growth in key economic growth engines of the private market, such as artificial intelligence and blockchain.
AB Xelerate, the fintech accelerator of Arab Bank, a major international bank headquartered in Amman, Jordan, announced an investment in stablecoin settlement company Ubyx. The specific investment amount was not disclosed. The new funds will support Ubyx's development of a shared network that will enable regulated financial institutions to issue, accept, and exchange digital currencies at face value across multiple blockchains and jurisdictions, while operating within established regulatory and compliance frameworks. Previously, it was reported that Ubyx had been acquired by banking giant Barclays and was exploring the development of "tokenized currencies."
Centralized Finance
Stake has raised $31 million in Series B funding, led by the National Bank of the UAE.
Digital asset real estate investment platform Stake has raised $31 million in its Series B funding round. The round was led by Emirates NBD, with participation from Mubadala Investment Company, Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), Property Finder, STC NICE, Wa'ed Ventures, GFH Partners, and Ellington Properties.
The funds will be used to invest in artificial intelligence, tokenization, and new product development. The company raised a total of $5 million in its seed round; $8 million in pre-Series A funding; $14 million in Series A funding; and has now raised $31 million in Series B funding, bringing its total to $58 million.
Fintech company Newity has raised $11 million to bring small business lending to the blockchain.
Newity, a fintech company focused on facilitating small business lending, has raised $11 million in a strategic funding round as it explores moving these loans on-chain. CMT Digital, a subsidiary of trading and investment firm CMT Group, led the round, with other participants including private and institutional investors. This is Newity's first funding round, which began in late 2024 and will close in December 2025. The round uses a Simple Equity in the Future (SAFE) structure, but Newity's valuation and whether any investors have been granted board or advisory seats were not disclosed.
Prediction Market
Sports prediction market Novig raises $75 million in Series B funding, led by Pantera Capital.
Novig, a sports betting prediction market platform, announced the completion of a $75 million Series B funding round led by Pantera Capital, valuing the company at $500 million post-funding. Novig co-founder Jacob Fortinsky stated that the company, founded in 2021, aims to create a consumer-friendly platform for modern sports bettors, with its core advantage being its peer-to-peer trading model. Novig is currently applying for a license from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, expected to be completed within six months. Fortinsky emphasized that unlike platforms such as Kalshi and Polymarket, Novig's product design and brand positioning are centered around sports events, better aligning with the usage habits of ordinary sports fans.
Sports prediction and trading platform PRED has raised $2.5 million in seed funding, led by Accel.
Sports betting platform PRED has completed a $2.5 million seed funding round led by Accel, with participation from Coinbase Ventures' Base Ecosystem Fund (BEF) and Reverie, among others. Built on Base, PRED claims an execution speed of only 200 milliseconds, bringing it closer to financial exchange standards than any service offered in the traditional sports betting space. PRED is currently in internal testing and uses an invitation-only registration process.
Kalshi receives strategic investment from Tradeweb, which will acquire a minority stake.
Electronic trading platform Tradeweb Markets announced a strategic investment in prediction market operator Kalshi, acquiring a minority stake. Specific investment amounts and equity percentages were not disclosed. The two companies will integrate event-driven market data and explore new infrastructure for trading event contracts through the Tradeweb electronic platform. Tradeweb stated it will integrate Kalshi's real-time event probability data into its rate and credit trading platform, including the user interface, API, and data download tools, enabling institutional clients to directly reference prediction market probabilities within their existing macro trading processes.
DAT
Nasdaq-listed Canton Treasury company Thaimmune announced its official name change to Canton Strategic Holdings and its stock ticker symbol "CNTN," making it the first US-listed company backed by the Canton Foundation. The company also disclosed that its previously announced $55 million share offering has been completed, with the aim of continuing to expand and develop its digital asset fund management strategy centered on Canton Coin.
Ethereum treasury company Republic Technologies announces $3 million private funding round.
Republic Technologies, a Canadian-listed Ethereum treasury company, announced a private placement of up to 14,087,000 special warrants at a price of $0.21 per warrant, raising a total of $3 million. The company previously disclosed holdings of approximately 1,570.6 ETH at an average purchase price of $2,700, with a current market value of approximately $3.2 million.
Venture capital firms
Dragonfly has completed its fourth fund raising, reaching $650 million.
Crypto VC Dragonfly has completed fundraising for its fourth fund, raising $650 million. Dragonfly Managing Partner Haseeb stated that this fourth fund is their largest investment to date, and they believe the cryptocurrency revolution is still in its early stages of exponential growth. He added, "Proxy payments, on-chain privacy, tokenization of everything—the cryptocurrency landscape is about to explode, and we want to support the founders who lead the way."
Crypto investment firm DBA has raised $68 million for its second venture capital fund.
New York-based crypto investment firm DBA has raised $68 million for its second venture capital fund. This follows its $50 million first fund raised in 2023. DBA was co-founded by Michael Jordan, former co-head of investment at Galaxy Digital, and Jon Charbonneau, a well-known Ethereum commentator. Its portfolio includes investments in underlying infrastructure such as DoubleZero and Monad, stablecoin app Payy, ICO fundraising platform MetaDAO, and Bitcoin scaling solutions.
