Weekly Funding Signal
Stablecoin payment rails—not issuance—are now where the smart money is flowing, with settlement, on/off-ramp, and bank backend infrastructure capturing the week's most concentrated crypto rounds.
Key Deals
| Project | Sector | Amount | Investors | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| dtcpay | Stablecoin Payments | $25M (Series A, extended) | SBI Group (strategic), Vertex Ventures, Genedant Capital, Kwee Liong Tek | SBI joins to build a Japan–Southeast Asia digital asset corridor through a regulated, Visa-licensed stablecoin stack. |
| Kaiko | Crypto Market Data | $110M | S&P Global (lead), DRW, Susquehanna, Nasdaq, BNP Paribas, Coinbase Ventures | Institutional data infrastructure is consolidating as traditional finance anchors the crypto analytics stack. |
| Velocity | Stablecoin Payments | $48M (Series A, total) | Visa Ventures, Circle Ventures, Haun Ventures, Ripple, Translink Capital, Mirana Ventures | Mirana's Asian capital joins Tier-1 payment giants betting on stablecoin settlement as the hidden backend layer. |
| Cornelis | AI Network Infrastructure | $205M | IAG Capital Partners (lead) | Open-architecture GPU networking takes direct aim at Nvidia's lock-in, with Asian cloud demand a key expansion target. |
Builder to Watch
- dtcpay: dtcpay has quietly assembled one of the most complete regulated stablecoin payment stacks in Asia, holding licenses across Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Australia, the US and Canada, and issuing a compliant Visa stablecoin card as a full Visa member. The SBI strategic investment is the clearest signal yet that Japanese institutional capital is preparing to route cross-border settlement through stablecoin rails. The stated ambition to build a Japan–Southeast Asia digital asset corridor gives dtcpay the strongest Asia-native narrative in this week's stablecoin cluster—it is not exporting a Western model, but building infrastructure for regional payment rails from the inside.
Also Noted
- Fin.com: Raised $20M in seed funding led by Expa and Garrett Camp, with Coinbase Ventures among participants. The Gulf and Africa sovereign funds and royal family offices in its cap table signal an early Asia-adjacent corridor play.
- Tina: Secured $3M from Thinkware, Gemhead Capital and others for its Solana-based geospatial DePIN network. The drive-to-earn data collection model has clear applicability to dense Southeast Asian mobility markets.
- Temporal: Raised $550M at a $12.55B valuation with Singapore's GIC participating as an existing investor. The sovereign fund's continued backing signals institutional Asian appetite for agent-infrastructure software.
- Brookfield AI Infrastructure Fund: Nvidia committed $2B alongside Kuwait Investment Authority as cornerstones. The Middle East sovereign pairing makes this a meaningful Asia-region capital anchor for AI factory buildout.
- EVAS Intelligence: The Chinese AI chip unicorn closed nearly RMB 2B at a RMB 15B valuation from over 20 domestic investors. A pure mainland China hardware play, notable for its scale rather than cross-border crypto relevance.
Capital Flow
- Stablecoin payment infrastructure—settlement, liquidity management, on/off-ramps, and bank backends—drew the most concentrated crypto capital this week, with Visa, Circle, Ripple and SBI all deploying simultaneously.
- Institutional investors favored regulated, license-heavy payments stacks and post-trade asset infrastructure over speculative protocols, signaling a compliance-first allocation thesis.
- The Asia angle was strongest in the Japan–Southeast Asia stablecoin corridor and in sovereign-linked AI compute commitments from Gulf and Singapore state funds.
PANews View
The stablecoin narrative has decisively shifted from issuance to rails: the market is no longer asking who prints dollars on-chain, but who can settle them across borders with bank-grade compliance. Asia's structural advantage—dense cross-border trade corridors, fragmented payment systems, and sovereign digital asset ambitions—makes it the natural proving ground for this infrastructure layer. Expect the Japan–Southeast Asia stablecoin corridor to become a defining competitive arena over the next two quarters.
