News linked to this event type.
According to Bloomberg, SoftBank Group is scaling back a financing plan that uses its equity stake in OpenAI as collateral. The original plan aimed to raise approximately $10 billion in margin loans, but the amount may now be reduced to around $6 billion. Reportedly, some lenders have expressed concerns about the transaction structure and the reliability of OpenAI’s valuation as a private company—key factors hindering progress on the financing. The loan was initially structured as a two-year facility, extendable by one year, secured against SoftBank’s OpenAI equity holdings, and intended to further expand its investment footprint in the artificial intelligence sector.
According to an official announcement, Sportix.AI has raised $3.2 million to build AI-powered sports intelligence infrastructure. The company stated that this funding marks a significant milestone in advancing its team’s long-term vision. Backers of this round include CoinvestorV, Animoca Brands, Becker Ventures, X21 Digital, and Alpha Capital.
AI automation workflow startup Tessera Labs has announced a $60 million funding round led by a16z, with participation from Foundation Capital, Myriad Venture Partners, Osage University Partners, and others. The company primarily leverages AI to automate enterprise SAP and ERP migration and modernization processes. Its AI-native platform can compress enterprise transformation project timelines from years to weeks and reduce costs by more than half. (TechfundingNews)
Odaily, Odaily news: Balcony, a RWA infrastructure based on the Avalanche blockchain, announced the completion of a $12.7 million seed funding round, led by Blockchange Ventures. The new funds will be used to deploy its platform for on-chain real estate transactions and asset settlement services in the U.S. market, integrating fragmented property records into a tamper-proof digital registry. (Tamradar)
Odaily Odaily Planet Daily reports that Swiss investment institution Multi Investment has announced the completion of a CHF 480 million (approximately USD 616 million) fundraising round, bringing its total assets under management to over CHF 3 billion. The initiative aims to further advance its portfolio diversification strategy, with a key focus on high-growth sectors including FinTech, Deep Tech, Blockchain, and Web3. Multi Investment plans to increase its investment intensity in these strategic areas before the third quarter of 2026, with multiple deals currently under evaluation. It also intends to rapidly expand its influence within relevant emerging ecosystems. (eqs-news)
U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren posted a comment on X regarding the recent controversies surrounding World Liberty Financial (WLFI). She stated, “While this crypto project backed by the Trump family—WLFI—is quietly cashing out, ordinary investors are left stranded.” Warren shared Bloomberg’s recent report on WLFI’s fund flows, which revealed that most of the proceeds raised through fundraising and private token sales have flowed to entities affiliated with the project’s founders. The project team sets governance rules, controls token issuance, and captures revenues—while investors have virtually no exit options.
According to Decrypt, Australia’s financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC has launched two targeted regulatory initiatives against the virtual asset industry, focusing on anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorism financing (CTF) risk management practices of relevant businesses. These initiatives cover 36 cryptocurrency-to-fiat over-the-counter (OTC) trading operators and 27 domestic cryptocurrency exchanges. Australia’s new regulations have expanded oversight from traditional cryptocurrency exchanges to Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASPs), including custodial and brokerage services. The Travel Rule for virtual asset transfers will become mandatory on July 1.
According to PR Newswire, Swiss investment firm Multi Investment announced the completion of a CHF 480 million funding round, bringing its assets under management to over CHF 3 billion. The company stated that this financing will advance its portfolio diversification strategy, with a focus on high-potential innovation sectors including fintech, deep tech, healthcare, blockchain and Web3, and biotechnology. It plans to complete targeted investments exceeding CHF 250 million by the end of Q3 2026, and several transactions are currently under review.
According to Bloomberg, European Central Bank (ECB) President Christine Lagarde stated in a speech delivered on May 8 local time that even euro-denominated stablecoins would pose risks to financial stability and monetary policy transmission, and she questioned the necessity of introducing such instruments. Lagarde noted that while euro stablecoins might help reduce financing costs in the euro area and enhance the euro’s global influence, the associated trade-offs “cannot be ignored.”
According to the UK’s Financial Times, AI company Anthropic is considering launching a new funding round this summer, with a maximum fundraising target of $50 billion and a pre-money valuation of approximately $900 billion—potentially surpassing OpenAI (valued at $852 billion in March) to become the world’s most highly valued AI company. So far, investment firms including Dragoneer, General Catalyst, and Lightspeed Venture Partners have proactively expressed interest in investing. Sources indicate that Anthropic’s annualized revenue is poised to exceed $45 billion—roughly five times its $9 billion year-end figure from last year. This funding round is expected to close within two months and pave the way for an IPO later this year.
According to TheEnergyMag, U.S.-based Bitcoin company American Bitcoin Corp. (NASDAQ: ABTC) disclosed in its latest quarterly report that in February of this year, it purchased approximately 11,298 S21 XP ASIC miners (with a combined hash rate of roughly 3.05 EH/s) from Bitmain for $49.4 million. Of this amount, 80% was paid via the pledge of 314 BTC. Based on this, the agreed-upon valuation per pledged BTC was approximately $125,900—roughly a 44% discount compared to BTC’s market price at the time, which was under $70,000. Per the agreement, Bitmain is prohibited from forcibly liquidating the pledged BTC during a ~24-month redemption period. If BTC’s price exceeds the agreed valuation upon maturity, ABTC may repay in cash and reclaim the BTC, thereby locking in appreciation gains; if BTC’s price falls below the agreed valuation, ABTC may elect not to redeem and leave the BTC with Bitmain. This structure effectively grants ABTC a long-dated Bitcoin call option. As of March 31, 2026, ABTC has pledged a cumulative total of 3,090 BTC to Bitmain, with a fair value of approximately $210.8 million, corresponding to mining equipment procurement liabilities of roughly $364.3 million. These miners have already been deployed at the facility of ABTC’s parent company Hut 8 (NASDAQ: HUT) in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada.
Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), led by Michael Saylor, has been accelerating its Bitcoin acquisitions this year. JPMorgan analysts stated that if the current pace continues, the company's total Bitcoin purchases for the year could reach approximately $30 billion. So far this year, Strategy has added 145,834 Bitcoin to its holdings, valued at around $11 billion. Analysis indicates that a significant portion of the company's purchases occurred when Bitcoin was below its average cost of roughly $75,000, reflecting a more "opportunistic" allocation strategy.At the current rate, Strategy's total Bitcoin purchases in 2026 could significantly exceed the approximately $22 billion levels seen in 2024 and 2025. Analysts noted that the company has re-accelerated its buying since April, suggesting its strategy is becoming more dependent on market conditions and financing availability. Meanwhile, Strategy's stock continues to trade at a premium of approximately 26% to its net asset value (NAV), providing favorable conditions for the company to continue purchasing Bitcoin through equity and debt financing. The company currently holds approximately 818,334 BTC, with a total value exceeding $65 billion. (The Block)
Blitzy, an AI coding company co-founded by former Nvidia architect Sid Pardeshi, has announced the completion of a $200 million funding round. Northzone led the round, with participation from Battery Ventures, Jump Capital, and crypto investment firm Morgan Creek Digital, among others. It is reported that the Blitzy platform can parse complex systems with over 100 million lines of code and execute development, testing, and verification tasks in parallel through thousands of AI agents. This model is seen as a significant application direction for Agentic AI in the development field. The new funds will be used to expand research and development as well as market outreach, focusing primarily on highly regulated industries such as finance. (Techfundingnews)
investment bank TD Cowen on Thursday raised its price target for Strategy (MSTR) to $395 from $385, believing the market underestimates the capital efficiency of the company’s bitcoin accumulation strategy following its increased issuance of STRC perpetual preferred stock. Analysts Lance Vitanza and Jonnathan Navarrete indicated that the new target still implies over 110% upside from Strategy’s Wednesday closing price of $186.82.The analysis notes that Strategy is gradually reducing common equity financing and increasingly relying on STRC perpetual preferred stock, which yields 11.5%, to fund bitcoin purchases. STRC is also a core component of Michael Saylor’s “42/42 plan,” which aims to raise $42 billion each through equity and fixed-income instruments over three years.TD Cowen believes the market underestimates the effect of the STRC structure on boosting “BTC Yield,” a metric measuring the company’s growth in bitcoin holdings per fully diluted share. The report raised its BTC Yield forecast for Strategy’s fiscal 2026 to 18.2% from 16.7%, and for 2027 to 9.6% from 5.4%. Additionally, analysts argue that concerns about Strategy being a “perpetual dilution machine” are exaggerated. The company’s annual preferred stock dividend payments, currently around $1.5 billion, represent only about 2.2% of the value of its 818,334 BTC reserve.In TD Cowen’s base case scenario, bitcoin is expected to reach $140,000 by the end of 2026. In a bull case, bitcoin could rise to $175,000, with Strategy potentially purchasing over $5 billion in bitcoin per quarter. (The Block)
Odaily forecasts that the prediction market platform Kalshi has announced the completion of a new $1 billion funding round, led by Coatue Management, boosting the company's valuation to $22 billion. Kalshi is a prediction market platform that allows users to trade on the outcomes of events such as sports, politics, and weather. Following the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election, the platform has seen significant user growth, gradually entering the mainstream financial market's spotlight.Data shows that Kalshi has approximately 2 million monthly active users, with an annualized trading volume reaching $178 billion. This volume has more than tripled over the past six months, resulting in an annualized revenue exceeding $1.5 billion.This funding round is also the third round of financing completed by Kalshi in the past seven months, with valuations nearly doubling each time. This reflects the continued warming of the prediction market track among institutional capital, albeit accompanied by regulatory lawsuits and controversies surrounding "insider trading." (The New York Times)
According to Bloomberg, Payward Inc., Kraken’s parent company, has agreed to acquire Hong Kong-based Reap Technologies for $600 million in cash and stock. Reap Technologies is a provider specializing in stablecoin-based cross-border and commercial payment services. Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, stated that the Payward stock issued in this transaction is valued at $2 billion. The acquisition aims to expand Payward’s presence in the Asian market.
Anthropic's implied valuation in the on-chain Pre-IPO market has instantly surged to $1.2 trillion (approximately RMB 8.7 trillion), officially surpassing OpenAI. Its current pre-IPO valuation is now about 20% higher than OpenAI's. If listed at this valuation, it would directly become the world's 11th largest publicly traded company by market cap, trailing only Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, TSMC, Broadcom, Tesla, and Saudi Aramco. (Sina Finance)
Tom Lee said in an interview with CNBC today that although U.S. equity markets have hit record highs, valuations for leading stocks—particularly those tied to AI and semiconductors—remain reasonable. He noted that forward price-to-earnings ratios for semiconductor and tech leaders stand at approximately 22x, well below their 20-year historical highs. Demand in these sectors continues to grow explosively, so “there is still room for upside—the S&P 500 could reach 7,700 or higher by year-end.”
According to The Block, South Korean cryptocurrency exchange Bithumb announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with SSI Digital (SSID), the blockchain subsidiary of Vietnam’s largest securities firm, SSI. Under the MOU, the two parties will jointly establish and operate a digital asset exchange in Vietnam, covering areas including wallet and custody systems, security risk management, regulatory compliance, and product development. The agreement was signed in March this year and officially announced today. Bithumb stated that, subject to approval by local regulatory authorities, it may make a strategic investment in SSID’s cryptocurrency exchange project.
WEEX Exchange has officially launched its TradFi market, offering one-stop direct access to over 90 traditional financial assets—including U.S. equities, precious metals, and commodities. To lower the barrier to cross-market trading, WEEX has extended its “Zero-Fee Gold, Crude Oil, and U.S. Equity Futures” promotion until May 31. During this period, both makers and takers enjoy zero trading fees on these futures contracts, empowering crypto users to engage with global financial markets at zero cost.