Weekly Funding Signal
Stablecoin payments and prediction markets drove crypto capital this week, while AI infrastructure absorbed mega-rounds from Asia's largest corporate investors.
Key Deals
| Project | Sector | Amount | Investors | Why It Matters |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raven | Prediction Market | Undisclosed (Strategic) | Coinbase Ventures, CMCC Global | Hong Kong's CMCC joining the board signals deepening Asia institutional liquidity for prediction markets. |
| Limited | CeFi / Crypto Banking | $18.5M Seed | Third Prime, NIV, The House Fund, Collab+Currency; DCG, 1982 Ventures, Onigiri Capital | Asia-focused backers 1982 Ventures and Onigiri Capital bet on cross-border corporate crypto banking rails. |
| Walapay | Stablecoin Payments | $4.6M Seed | Gen Venture Capital (lead), NGC Ventures, Polygon, Commerce Ventures, etc. | Asia-led round with NGC Ventures backing a licensing-first stablecoin payments expansion play. |
| OpenAI | AI Model | $10B (Third Round) | SoftBank | SoftBank's third tranche deepens Japan's strategic AI compute and model infrastructure bet. |
| Helix Digital Infrastructure | AI Infrastructure | $1B | Samsung Group (Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDS, Samsung SDI) | Samsung's billion-dollar AI infrastructure move extends Korean chaebol reach into US data centers. |
| GMI Cloud | AI Cloud Platform | $668M | ARCHIV (lead), NVIDIA | NVIDIA participation underlines Asia-founded cloud compute's role in global AI inference capacity. |
Builder to Watch
- Raven: Raven converted from crypto market maker to institutional prediction market liquidity provider, now serving Kalshi and Polymarket across more than 3,000 contracts spanning sports, crypto, macro, and entertainment. Coinbase Ventures and CMCC Global joined the round at a $90 million pre-money valuation, with CMCC co-founder Charlie Morris taking a board seat to drive institutional expansion. Raven's Asia connection is direct: Hong Kong-headquartered CMCC Global is one of the region's most established crypto funds, and its board involvement signals a deliberate push to capture Asian institutional demand for prediction market exposure. The platform's role as a neutral liquidity layer across both US-regulated and on-chain venues positions it uniquely if APAC jurisdictions warm to event-based markets.
Also Noted
- Jeeves: Miami fintech raised $110M Series C led by CoinFund for stablecoin wallet infrastructure and AI agent automation, with 50-60% of international payments already settled in USDC/EURC. Asia link is prospective: the round targets expansion into 25+ countries, with APAC payment corridors a likely near-term focus given stablecoin adoption there.
- PERPTools: AI perpetuals platform from DEXTools developers raised $8M across pre-seed and seed rounds with NEAR, Animoca Brands, and Shima Capital participating. Asia thread is minor but notable through Hong Kong-based Animoca's involvement and the platform's Q4 TGE targeting global perps traders.
- Grass: Multicoin Capital announced investment in the DePIN bandwidth-sharing network that supplies AI training data, generating $17M revenue in both 2025 and H1 2026. Asia connection is indirect: the network's six million contributors include a substantial APAC user base, though no Asia-specific fund or expansion plan is disclosed.
Capital Flow
- Stablecoin payment infrastructure and prediction market liquidity were the clearest crypto capital magnets, reflecting investor conviction in settlement rails and event-based marketplaces.
- Investors favored revenue-generating platforms with clear institutional or enterprise distribution paths, from crypto corporate banking to AI cloud inference.
- The Asia angle was most pronounced in Hong Kong and South Korea, with CMCC Global board participation and Samsung's billion-dollar AI infrastructure commitment anchoring the week's cross-border capital flows.
PANews View
This week reveals a bifurcation: crypto funding remains disciplined and infrastructure-focused, while AI capital is moving at sovereign-corporate scale through SoftBank and Samsung. The quiet signal is Raven's CMCC board seat — Asian institutional capital is no longer just writing checks but taking governance positions in category-defining market structures. Expect the stablecoin-payments and prediction-market convergence to tighten as Asian regulators clarify cross-border settlement rules.
