News linked to this event type.
Odaily News: Sources reveal that Discovery Loop, an AI startup founded by former Google Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, is in talks to raise $1 billion at a valuation of approximately $10 billion. Specific terms of the funding round are still subject to change.Discovery Loop aims to accelerate discovery in science and engineering through automated machine learning, science and engineering, and parallel execution of thousands of experiments. Its initial funding was led by Radical Ventures and Khosla Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed, Kleiner Perkins, and Doerr Capital, while Alphabet serves as founding investor and cloud services partner. The founding team of Discovery Loop also includes former core Google researchers such as Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le, and Oriol Vinyals. (businessinsider)
The Bank of England Digital Pound Lab, in collaboration with NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs, tested the interoperability of stablecoins and simulated digital pounds in cross-border trade finance, aiming to reduce settlement delays and financing constraints for SMEs.
According to Bloomberg, Lightspeed Venture Partners is seeking to raise approximately $600 million through secondary transactions to extend its investment exposure to OpenAI and other artificial intelligence companies, and to make additional investments in AI model company Anthropic. According to people familiar with the matter, the internal codename for Lightspeed's fundraising transaction is "Project Mercury", involving multiple secondary funds under Lightspeed, including the Select V Fund, the Opportunity II Fund, and portions of assets in a separately managed account. Lightspeed hopes to provide liquidity for investors through secondary market transactions while continuing to maintain long-term holdings in leading companies in the AI sector.
According to Bloomberg, AI-driven code review service company CodeRabbit Inc. has completed a new $143 million financing round. The round was jointly led by Atomico and Smash Capital, with participation from BMW i Ventures and Datadog Inc., and continued support from existing shareholder Nvidia. Following this round, CodeRabbit's valuation reached $1.5 billion, with total cumulative financing exceeding $200 million. CodeRabbit focuses on providing defect identification and review services for AI-generated code. With the widespread adoption of AI programming tools, market demand for code quality assurance tools continues to grow.
AI investment platform Thrive Holdings announced the completion of a $2 billion financing round, valuing the company at $12 billion, with participation from SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners, and Altimeter Capital, among others. Thrive Holdings was founded in 2025 by Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital. Unlike traditional investment firms, it does not directly invest in companies developing large AI models, but primarily acquires traditional service enterprises and integrates AI technology into business processes to improve efficiency. Its goal is to build platforms and products to introduce cutting-edge artificial intelligence into key industries that millions of enterprises and individuals rely on daily. The company had previously secured approximately $1 billion in initial funding.
The Bitcoin treasury company Strategy officially announced that it will hold an investor Q&A livestream at 12:00 ET on August 17. The company's Founder and Executive Chairman Michael Saylor and CEO Phong Le will attend. It is reported that this investor Q&A is expected to focus on market-concerned topics such as the company's Bitcoin strategy, capital operations, financing plans, and future business direction.
Odaily News – Bitcoin miner MARA Holdings disclosed in its latest quarterly SEC filing that it has pledged 18,750 BTC as collateral for two Bitcoin-backed loans, totaling $750 million in principal.Among these, financing provided by Coinbase Credit includes a refinancing of the original $150 million credit facility plus an additional $300 million in new funds; Two Prime Lending separately provided a $300 million loan. Both loans have been fully drawn, with a combined financing cost of approximately 7.56%, primarily maturing in August 2028.The pledged 18,750 BTC were valued at approximately $1.2 billion at the time of the transaction. If a decline in Bitcoin's price pushes the collateral ratio below the agreed level, MARA could face margin call requirements; otherwise, the related BTC may be subject to liquidation risk.The new funds will mainly be used for general corporate purposes and to support MARA's acquisition of Long Ridge Energy & Power. The transaction has an enterprise value of approximately $1.5 billion. Long Ridge owns a natural gas power plant in Ohio, USA, with an expected installed capacity of 505 MW, along with over 1,600 acres of industrial land. MARA plans to further develop the site into a base for Bitcoin mining, AI, and high-performance computing infrastructure. (Crowdfund Insider)
Odaily News: ZEC treasury company Cypherpunk Technologies (Nasdaq: CYPH) has released its Q2 2026 financial report, posting a net profit of $39.39 million, or $0.18 diluted earnings per share; in the same period last year, the company reported a net loss of $16.64 million and an operating loss of $4.69 million. R&D expenses stood at $0.2 million, down from $10.54 million in the same period last year, primarily due to the completion of clinical trials; general and administrative expenses reached $4.49 million, up $2.75 million year-over-year, mainly driven by increased stock-based compensation. As of June 30, the company's cash balance was $7.6 million. During Q2, the ZEC price rose from $243.35 to $400.09, generating approximately $46 million in non-cash unrealized gains for the company. As of August 11, 2026, the company held a cumulative total of 323,400 ZEC, with an average cost basis of approximately $341.83, representing about 1.92% of ZEC's total circulating supply. On the business development front, the company has appointed Dev Ojha, founder of Valar Group, as an advisor. Valar Group focuses on Zcash network development and research, and has led the development of the high-performance full node software Zakura and the Ironwood shielded pool. The company's subsidiary, Leap Therapeutics, has reached an agreement with the U.S. FDA on the Phase III clinical trial design for sirexatamab (anti-DKK1 monoclonal antibody), and received FDA Fast Track designation in May 2026 for the treatment of patients with second-line metastatic colorectal cancer with high DKK1 expression. The company has also initiated a strategic process to evaluate pathways for advancing sirexatamab development through independent financing or collaboration with partners.
Odaily News: AI software development startup Lovable has announced the completion of a $400 million Series C funding round, led by Menlo Ventures, with Scaleup Europe Fund, managed by EQT, co-leading. The company's valuation now stands at $13.3 billion, doubling from the $6.6 billion valuation at its December funding round. Lovable co-founder and CEO Anton Osika stated that the company's annual recurring revenue has nearly tripled since December. In March, Lovable disclosed that its annual recurring revenue had reached $400 million, up from $300 million a month earlier and $200 million at the end of 2025. Lovable helps users build software through natural language prompts. The company says that since its launch in November 2024, over 60 million projects have been created on the platform. (Business Insider)
According to CoinDesk, the Bank of England (BOE) announced that its digital pound project has officially entered the second phase, focusing on testing whether public stablecoins and Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) can interoperate within a single payment stream to promote the modernization of cross-border trade finance. This experiment focuses on SME trade finance scenarios: exporters receive advance financing through stablecoin technology, while UK importers complete final settlement using the digital pound. Participants include UK fintech company NOBO Finance, global business data analytics firm Dun & Bradstreet, and blockchain company Polygon Labs. The three parties will integrate wallet transaction data, open finance information, and business intelligence to build reusable credit assessment profiles for SMEs. Polygon will provide stablecoin settlement infrastructure through its Open Money Stack, encompassing fiat currency exchange, wallet, and smart contract functionalities. The BOE emphasized that the laboratory does not involve real customers or funds, does not represent a decision to officially issue the digital pound, and the experimental results will serve as a reference for the joint assessment of the digital pound by the Bank of England and the Treasury later this year.
Odaily News: The Bank of England's (BOE) digital pound project has entered its second phase, testing whether publicly issued stablecoins and central bank currency can operate together in a single payment process for trade finance. The BOE will collaborate with NOBO Finance, Dun & Bradstreet, and Polygon Labs in its Digital Pound Lab to explore building reusable credit profiles for small businesses and research the use of stablecoins alongside a potential digital pound in invoice factoring. The experiments do not involve real customers or funds and are designed to provide a reference for the BOE and the UK Treasury in evaluating the interoperability of different forms of digital currency. (CoinDesk)
According to Bloomberg, Stockholm, Sweden-based AI programming startup Lovable announced the completion of a $400 million Series C funding round, reaching a post-money valuation of $13.3 billion. The round was co-led by Menlo Ventures and the EU-backed investment firm Scaleup Europe Fund (managed by EQT AB), with participation from multiple venture capital firms. New investors from Latin America and Asia, including Tencent Holdings, also participated. Lovable is dedicated to the AI-assisted programming field and is accelerating expansion to compete with larger-scale competitors such as Anthropic.
Bitget announces the launch of the "Archimedes Plan (Project Archimedes)", establishing a dedicated fund with a total size of $300 million to provide capital support to quantitative trading firms, asset management institutions, and market makers. The plan comprises two sub-projects: a $100 million "Funding Support Plan" focusing on supporting emerging and growth-stage quantitative institutions adopting market-neutral strategies; and a $200 million "Interest-Free Loan Plan" targeted at institutions with mature strategies and certain trading volumes, where those meeting corresponding trading volume or position standards can obtain interest-free funds to reduce financing costs and expand strategy scale. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated that as institutional trading competition intensifies, capital, execution efficiency, and risk control are becoming key factors determining whether strategies can achieve scalability. Project Archimedes aims to help teams with mature capabilities expand strategy scale through capital support, and is expected to support over 50 projects within the next six months. Meanwhile, leveraging the Bitget Unified Account (UTA), institutions can use rToken spot positions as derivatives margin, maintaining tokenized stock exposure and contract strategies simultaneously without cross-account transfers, thereby further improving capital efficiency. Project Archimedes will adopt a long-term cooperation framework, implementing rolling access and phased deployment, and will subsequently disclose progress regularly, including the number of participating institutions, fund deployment scale, and strategy distribution.
According to EU-Startups, UK cybersecurity startup Cytix announced the completion of a 6 million euro (approximately 7 million USD) Series A funding round, led by UK venture capital firm Northern Gritstone, with participation from existing investors Auriga Cyber Ventures and NPIF II – PXN Equity Finance. Founded in 2020, Cytix focuses on addressing software change security risks arising from AI-assisted development, agent workflows, and continuous delivery, and its change risk management platform helps enterprises identify high-risk changes and take corresponding measures.
Odaily News: Crypto travel platform Entravel has completed a $7.5 million funding round, co-led by Ethereal Ventures and Finality Capital, with participation from GSR, Varrock, G1 Ventures, Seier Capital, Veris Ventures, Funfair Ventures, and WTG Ventures.Entravel provides travel booking systems for over 40 brands including Kraken and MetaMask, covering 300 million users with an average booking conversion rate exceeding 10%. The company was founded in 2026. (Tech Funding News)
According to TechFlow Research, JPMorgan's US stock strategy report on August 9 raised the S&P 500 year-end target price from 7,800 points to 8,000 points, the 2026 EPS forecast from $358 to $365 (+35%), and the 2027 EPS forecast to $420 (+15%). Among the 87% of companies that have disclosed earnings, 78% beat earnings expectations, with Q2 earnings growth reaching 53%. The report noted that AI capital expenditure is expected to reach $900 billion in 2026 (+85%), surpassing $1.2 trillion in 2027, with hyperscale vendors accounting for approximately 87%. However, cloud revenue realization is accelerating: AWS up 37%, Azure up 43%, Google Cloud up 82%; AWS backlog orders increased 36% quarter-over-quarter to $496 billion, and Google backlog orders increased by $55 billion to $514 billion. JPMorgan believes the order coverage ratio is improving, and monetization pace is catching up with spending pace. Excluding Google and Amazon's combined $152 billion in unrealized private equity gains (mainly from Anthropic's $65 billion financing), Q2 actual earnings growth was about 31%, and 2026 normalized EPS is about $347 (+28%). JPMorgan maintains the assumption of approximately 20x forward P/E ratio for the S&P 500 index unchanged, stating that the earnings upward revision is sufficient to
According to monitoring by the PPP Prediction Market Tool, in the Polymarket prediction event "Anthropic valuation hits target this year," the probability of reaching $1.5 trillion this year has risen to 76%, up 13% in 24 hours. The probability of reaching $1.25 trillion has risen to 92%, up 8% in 24 hours.According to the settlement rules, this market primarily relies on the private market valuation of Anthropic as published by Nasdaq Private Market (NPM). If Anthropic completes an IPO or direct listing during this period, the valuation corresponding to the official offering price and the public market capitalization after listing will also be included in the settlement basis. Currently, NPM data cited on the Polymarket page shows a valuation of approximately $1.13 trillion.Previously, according to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic plans to go public in September or early October, though the specific offering price and timeline have not yet been announced. If successfully listed, it could become one of the largest IPOs in history.Join the PPP Signal Push Community to stay ahead of the curve and seize opportunities first.
Odaily Odaily News: Market maker Jane Street is repaying a $5.5 billion floating-rate loan as part of a broader restructuring of $11 billion in total debt. The company also plans to issue $14.6 billion in senior secured notes maturing in 2031, 2033, and 2036, respectively, to refinance $5.6 billion in bonds.S&P has assigned a BB rating to Jane Street's upcoming debt transaction, two notches below investment grade, citing Jane Street's "consistently strong earnings track record" while noting the growing scale and scope of its trading operations.Jane Street reported record trading revenue of $39.6 billion last year. Bloomberg previously reported that the company is in talks with institutions including Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) regarding related financing arrangements. (Bloomberg)
Odaily News, Citrini analyst jukan stated on the X platform that Temasek, one of Asia's largest sovereign wealth funds, is making new investments in Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, marking Temasek's first foray into the Korean stock market.It is understood that Temasek believes memory semiconductors represent the lowest-valued segment within the AI value chain. An industry insider noted: "Temasek's investment approach is to allocate substantial capital to market-leading sectors from a long-term perspective. Samsung and SK Hynix have surged more than 880% from their lows last year, but this move indicates Temasek is confident the rally will continue."
GPU market data infrastructure company Silicon Data announced the completion of the first closing of its $30.5 million Series A financing round, led by Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from CME Ventures, DRW, Samsung Next, VanEck, Jump Trading, Wintermute, and others. The funds will be used for GPU benchmark pricing, performance measurement, institutional and alternative data, as well as derivatives, insurance, and credit market risk infrastructure.