In recent months, venture capital funding in the crypto industry has shown signs of stagnation, with some companies struggling to raise new funds—this trend is emphasized by Sarah Austin, co-founder of the real-world asset (RWA) platform Titled, which raised $1.3 million in seed funding earlier this year.
Despite the challenging macro environment, Kaden Stadelmann, CTO of the Komodo Platform, stated, “Blockchain infrastructure remains the main story in the crypto space.” He pointed out that key crypto themes still attracting investment include artificial intelligence, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), tokenization, payments, and RWA.
In June, several high-profile financing deals reflected this ongoing interest, with projects at the intersection of decentralized finance (DeFi), trading platforms, pre-seed growth funds, and digital assets with artificial intelligence securing capital.
The latest VC Roundup delves into these deals, which may limit trading activity in the short term against a backdrop of seasonal fluctuations.
Cryptocurrency exchange Rails revealed it secured $20 million in venture capital across two funding rounds, with the most recent round completed in April. The company is building a trading platform designed to combine the utility of centralized exchanges with the advantages of decentralized markets.
Rails is supported by cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, venture capital firm Slow Ventures, blockchain security company Quantstamp, and others.
Slow Ventures described Rails as “a hybrid perpetual exchange that offers the speed of a CEX for professional traders without sacrificing custody.”
Stablecoin payment service provider Beam has completed a $7 million funding round to expand its compliance efforts and network capabilities, aiming to further bridge the gap between digital assets and traditional finance. This round was led by Castle Ventures, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Archetype, Arca, Verda Ventures, and others.
Beam provides stablecoin payment rails for fintech companies, banks, and consumer platforms and has gone live on Visa Direct, Mastercard Send, and the U.S. Federal Reserve's FedNow system.
With this latest funding, Beam's total funding has now reached $14 million. The company plans to use the new capital to expand its operations in Latin America, Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and the European Union.
Former staking service provider Chorus One executive Xavier Meegan launched Frachtis, a $20 million pre-seed fund supported by Theta Capital, RockawayX, and others. The fund will support founders of startups building decentralized AI, infrastructure, and consumer applications.
Frachtis has already supported eight projects in the pre-seed and seed stages, covering DeFi and AI protocols.
Meegan stated he is leveraging his experience at Chorus One—where he led over 40 investments—to identify the next major use case for blockchain.
Web3 developer Inference Labs has raised $6.3 million to build a crypto trust layer for AI agents—describing this field as underdeveloped, especially in the context of the recent growth of AI tools. This funding round was supported by DACM, Delphi Ventures, Arche Capital, and Lvna Capital.
Inference Labs is developing Proof of Inference, a cryptographic method that uses zero-knowledge proofs to verify AI outputs. Zero-knowledge technology has gained attention in the crypto ecosystem for its ability to ensure transaction security and privacy.
With the new funding, Inference Labs has launched a testnet for its Proof of Inference, integrating EigenLayer and Bittensor. The mainnet is planned for release in the third quarter of this year.
Gradient Network, a company developing a decentralized AI runtime on Solana, has secured $10 million in seed funding from Pantera, Multicoin Capital, and HSG. The funds will support the expansion of Gradient's decentralized AI infrastructure, with one of its core protocols, Lattica, set to launch in June.
Gradient is also building Parallax, a decentralized inference engine aimed at scaling large language models and other AI applications.
A spokesperson for Gradient Network told Cointelegraph that the company's choice to build on Solana was a key factor in attracting investment from Pantera and Multicoin Capital.
Cryptocurrency exchange OKX and the programmable blockchain for intellectual property, Story, launched a $10 million ecosystem fund to support startups developing IP innovations, decentralized IP frameworks, and other applications that treat IP as an asset class.
The funds will be distributed through IP tokens—Story's native tokens representing on-chain intellectual property—to support use cases involving real-world IP assets, AI, data licensing, and programmable IP applications.
Story's developer PIP Labs raised $80 million in a Series B funding round last August, co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital, bringing its total funding to $140 million.
Blockchain startup Yupp completed a $33 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division a16z Crypto to build a blockchain-driven AI evaluation platform.
Yupp is developing a platform where users can compare outputs from leading AI models—including ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, and others—and earn cryptocurrency rewards through evaluations. The platform integrates payment services from Coinbase, Stripe, and PayPal.
The a16z team described Yupp as “turning human judgment into a renewable economic resource.”
Multichain DeFi infrastructure developer Blueprint Finance raised an additional $9.5 million to expand its product suite after launching its Ethereum-based yield platform Concrete and Solana-based trading and staking platform Glow Finance. This funding round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Yzi Labs, VanEck, Bitpanda Ventures, BitGo, Gate Ventures, and others.
This funding comes as the DeFi industry begins to recover from the bear market of 2022. Although the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi platforms has significantly rebounded from its lows, it remains below the historical highs of three years ago.
The blockchain ecosystem Units Network, built on the Waves protocol, has secured a $10 million investment led by Nimbus Capital to expand its infrastructure and address key scalability and decentralization challenges in the Web3 space.
The funds will be used to expand validator capacity, enhance cross-chain liquidity rails, and advance Units Network's AI roadmap.
Nimbus Capital is an investment firm supported by In On Capital, managing $1.2 billion in assets.
Related: Gate, Robinhood, Bybit all enter the fray: What’s driving the resurgence of tokenization in U.S. stocks?
Original article: “VC Roundup: DeFi, AI, and Hybrid Exchanges Showcase Strong Month for Crypto Markets”
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