News linked to this event type.
Morgan Stanley Global Head of Technology M&A Wally Cheng said that as companies race to fill technological gaps in areas such as chips, electricity, networking, and infrastructure, mergers and acquisitions in the artificial intelligence field are covering all sizes and expanding across multiple industries. Cheng stated: "I believe transaction activity will cover the full spectrum, including both private and public companies." While the semiconductors providing computing power for AI have attracted attention due to their "technological miracle" attributes, the infrastructure surrounding these chips also holds significant value, including areas such as networking, storage, electricity, and real estate. Cheng said that valuations in the AI industry remain "very difficult" because a balance must be struck between "imaginative unicorns with rainbow-like prospects" and actual execution risks. Evercore Senior Managing Director of Technology Investment Banking Tammy Kiely echoed similar views. She said potential acquirers must assess the potential value they themselves can create while weighing the cost of missing out on opportunities. (Jinshi)
fintech company Mercury has announced the completion of a new $200 million funding round, led by TCV with participation from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coatue Management, and other institutions.Mercury primarily provides banking services to startups. It currently serves over 300,000 clients and has achieved approximately $650 million in annualized revenue. The company stated that the recent surge in AI entrepreneurship has significantly driven demand for new company registrations and account openings, serving as a key growth driver.Meanwhile, Mercury also announced that it has received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to apply for a federal banking charter. This would enable it to expand lending capabilities, gain access to payment networks like Zelle, and reduce its reliance on partner banks. The company's founder stated that the long-term goal remains an independent IPO rather than an acquisition. (CNBC)
amidst the US earnings season and the continuous advancement of AI narratives by tech giants, according to official sources from Bitget, the platform has recently added 10 new US stock contract targets. As a result, Bitget's Universal Exchange (UEX) now supports 263 US stock tokens and 81 US stock contracts. The total number of US stock-related assets tradable across the entire platform has exceeded 340.This week enters a period of密集 earnings reports and macroeconomic data releases. Through continuous expansion, Bitget aims to provide users with a wide range of cross-market asset allocation channels.3 Key Focus Targets This Week:• NVDA (NVIDIA): Will release Q1 earnings after the US market closes on May 20. The implied volatility from the options market suggests a potential single-day swing of over 7.5%. As the core of AI computing power, its performance will directly impact the overall valuation trend of the tech sector.• GOOGL (Google): Recently, at its I/O conference, Google intensively released multiple new products such as Gemini 3.5 and AI agents. The market is closely monitoring the subsequent pace of commercial implementation and revenue monetization capabilities.• WMT (Walmart): Will release Q1 earnings before the market opens on May 21. As a retail giant, Walmart's resilience during the consumer downturn cycle is under significant scrutiny. The earnings results and guidance will directly influence investors' assessment of full-year growth expectations and the stock's short-term performance.
decentralized derivatives trading platform Variational has announced the completion of a $50 million Series A funding round. The round was led by Dragonfly Capital, with participation from Bain Capital Crypto and Coinbase Ventures. Headquartered in the Cayman Islands, the company is dedicated to building an on-chain derivatives protocol for institutional and traditional finance traders. By aggregating liquidity from both traditional finance and crypto markets, it aims to provide instantly tradable on-chain markets for real-world assets such as oil and commodities. Its core product, the Omni platform, adopts a zero-fee model and incorporates a liquidity pool mechanism to enhance market depth and execution efficiency.Variational stated that its goal is not to directly compete with centralized exchanges, but rather to connect multi-source liquidity through a "brokerage-style" model, including traditional finance market makers and major crypto trading platforms, in order to solve the "liquidity cold start" problem for on-chain markets. (Fortune)
Odaily AI search startup Exa Labs has completed a new funding round of $250 million, led by a16z, with a post-investment valuation rising to $2.2 billion. The company focuses on building search engine infrastructure for the AI era. Following this funding round, its valuation has more than tripled from approximately $700 million last fall. Industry insiders believe that with the accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence, the traditional search engine landscape dominated by Google may be reshaped. (Bloomberg)
Odaily News, Greeks.live analyzed on X platform that today, Bitcoin Put block trades accounted for nearly 40% of the total volume. The concentrated trades were bear put spreads for end-of-May, involving $75,000/$71,000 strikes, with a total notional value of nearly $200 million. Investors are leveraging the rebound to build defensive positions for the last ten days of the month.Overall, the market leans towards hedging against a pullback but does not anticipate a crash. May and June have traditionally been considered unfavorable months for the market. This month, major investors have been consistently increasing their defensive positions: buying effective protection, selling tail risk financing, and controlling costs.
Mouro Capital, a fintech venture capital fund under Santander Bank, has announced the first close of its third fund at $400 million, with Santander Bank also serving as the investor. The fund will prioritize investments in artificial intelligence, blockchain, capital markets, and wealth management, aiming to enter the deep intersection of financial services, AI, and enterprise software. Previously, Mouro Capital also participated in investments in the DeFi platform M^ZERO. (Ventureburn)
AI collaboration assistant Viktor has announced the completion of a $75 million funding round, led by Accel, with participation from Bek Ventures, Kaya VC, Tenacity Capital, and executives from companies such as Slack, Google DeepMind, and Figma. The company is currently building "AI virtual colleagues" embedded into Slack and Microsoft Teams. Unlike traditional personal AI assistant products, these AI colleagues can execute tasks across systems like Google Drive, Notion, Airtable, and Shopify, generate reports, and build organization-level memory. (Fortune)
Moment, an AI fintech company founded by former Citadel Securities quantitative traders and researchers, has announced the completion of a $78 million funding round, led by Index Ventures with participation from existing investors including a16z and Avra. Moment has established partnerships with institutions such as Edward Jones, LPL Financial Holdings, and Hightower Advisors, primarily providing AI automation infrastructure for fixed income and equity trading. The new capital will be used to accelerate the deployment and product expansion of AI in Wall Street trading systems. (Bloomberg)
According to Cointelegraph, Bitcoin has declined approximately 40% from its all-time high in October 2025, yet long-term valuation models indicate substantial upside potential remains. Based on the “Bitcoin Decay Channel” measurement of long-term trends, Bitcoin’s conservative year-end price range has been revised upward to $90,000–$255,000, with the high-end scenario reaching as high as $255,000. This model fits a logarithmic decay trend to historical cycle highs and lows, showing that BTC prices at the peaks of the 2013, 2017, and 2021 cycles all approached the upper channel boundary, while bear market bottoms fell near the lower boundary. Analyst Sminston stated that Bitcoin remains within a historic, long-term upward channel and noted that the price range for 2027 could further expand to $128,000–$308,000.
According to Fortune, Catena Labs—founded by Sean Neville, co-founder of Circle—has raised $30 million in its Series A funding round, led by Acrew Capital and a16z crypto, with participation from Breyer Capital, General Catalyst, and QED. Catena Labs focuses on developing tools that enable AI agents to conduct financial transactions securely. The company has applied to the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) in New York for a national trust bank charter, seeking regulatory authorization to process payments and hold customer funds. Previously, in 2025, Catena Labs secured an initial $18 million financing round led by a16z crypto.
According to Caixin, the global tax “satellite surveillance system,” CRS 2.0, is accelerating its rollout worldwide. Cryptographic assets, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and certain electronic money products have now been included within the scope of financial asset reporting. Hong Kong plans to implement CRS 2.0 by 2028 and simultaneously advance the Crypto-Asset Reporting Framework (CARF). In the future, cryptocurrency exchanges, brokers, and operators of crypto ATMs will be required to report cryptocurrency–fiat currency conversions, cross-cryptocurrency swaps, and domestic and cross-border transfers of cryptographic assets. Reports must precisely specify the full names of assets—for example, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Tether (USDT)—and aggregate data by transaction dimension, including total market value, total holdings, and number of transactions. For retail payment transactions, individual transactions exceeding USD 50,000 must be reported separately. Although mainland China has not yet officially announced a timeline for implementing CRS 2.0, since 2025, tax authorities in multiple regions have begun notifying taxpayers—via phone calls and text messages—to self-report overseas income earned between 2022 and 2024 and fulfill their tax obligations accordingly. It is understood that CRS 2.0 will not only fully expose overseas-held cryptographic assets to tax oversight but may also trigger coordinated scrutiny by other regulatory bodies.
As cryptocurrency trading platforms gradually expand from single digital asset trading to traditional asset trading—such as stocks, gold, foreign exchange (FX), and indices—the competitive landscape is shifting beyond “asset coverage” toward “trading entry points, operational workflows, and execution efficiency.” The speed with which users can identify opportunities, enter the market, and complete trades has become a key metric for exchange product experience. Bitget recently launched its “10-Second Gold Purchase Challenge,” inviting users to record the entire process—from opening the Bitget app’s homepage to completing an XAU/USD gold CFD trade—with participants who finish in under 10 seconds eligible for rewards. By capturing real user interactions, the campaign highlights how mobile TradFi trading workflows are evolving—and reflects how crypto exchanges are striving to bring traditional financial asset trading experiences further forward and simplify them. According to Bitget, the platform has already elevated TradFi access to a first-level navigation item on its app homepage, covering trading in gold, stocks, FX, and indices. In contrast to the past, when trading traditional assets typically required dedicated platforms or multi-layered navigation, Bitget aims to enable users to access diverse asset classes more directly within a single platform—via unified entry points and optimized mobile workflows.
non-custodial crypto wallet Sorted Wallet has completed a $4.4 million seed funding round, co-led by Tether and Gnosis with a $3.4 million equity investment. Vox Solutions provided an additional $1 million in strategic support, with angel investors including Movement, Angel Invest Group, and the founder of RWA.io also participating. (The Block)
According to The Block, non-custodial crypto wallet Sorted Wallet has raised $4.4 million in seed funding. Tether and Gnosis co-led a $3.4 million equity financing round, while Vox Solutions provided $1 million in strategic support. Angel investors—including Movement, Angel Invest Group, and the founder of RWA.io—also participated in the round.
According to Stilta’s official press release, on May 19, 2026, Stilta—a litigation-focused, agent-style AI company—announced it had raised $10.5 million in funding, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from founders and operators of Sana, Legora, OpenAI, Lovable, and Listen Labs, as well as Y Combinator. Founded in 2026 by four former members of McKinsey’s AI practice, Stilta’s AI platform performs reasoning and analysis across 180 million patents, 250 million scientific papers, and over one trillion web archives, helping enterprises conduct patent infringement evidence gathering, clear commercialization pathways, and uncover the value of patent portfolios. Since its launch in February this year, Stilta has signed contracts with companies including Roche, Alfa Laval, and Maersk, as well as three of the world’s top five intellectual property law firms.
IDG Capital is planning to raise a growth fund of approximately $2 billion. The fundraising process began about two months ago, with the goal of completing the first round of capital raising by the end of this year. The fund will invest in consumer technology and consumer sector-related companies in China and other regions.
According to CoinDesk, crypto infrastructure firm Zerohash is seeking new funding at a valuation exceeding $1.5 billion. This comes after Mastercard abandoned its investment plans for Zerohash following its $1.8 billion acquisition of UK-based stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK. Founded in 2017, Zerohash provides APIs and embedded development tools to financial institutions and fintech companies, enabling support for cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, and tokenized products. The company now serves over 5 million users across 190 countries, with clients including Morgan Stanley, Stripe, Interactive Brokers, BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund, and Franklin Templeton. In September 2025, Zerohash closed its $104 million Series D-2 round, valuing the company at $1 billion at that time.
the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Department of Justice have filed a lawsuit against the state of Minnesota and Governor Tim Walz, opposing the state's newly signed ban on prediction markets.The new Minnesota law, set to take effect on August 1, prohibits users from engaging in prediction market trading related to outcomes in sports, weather, company valuations, and government events. In the lawsuit, the CFTC stated this is the first state-level law in the U.S. to explicitly impose a comprehensive ban on prediction markets.The CFTC and the Department of Justice argue that the relevant products fall under federally regulated derivatives and "swap" contracts, over which the CFTC holds exclusive regulatory authority, and that state governments are not permitted to classify them as illegal gambling or prohibit them.This lawsuit further escalates the jurisdictional conflict between federal regulators and state-level gambling oversight authorities. Previously, the CFTC had sued states such as Illinois, Arizona, and Connecticut to oppose their attempts to shut down prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket.
Checker, a stablecoin infrastructure startup, announced the completion of $8 million in pre-seed and seed funding. Participants include Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, Framework Ventures, Bitso, Airtm, DFS Lab, Onigiri Capital, SNZ Capital, and Velocity. The project's primary business is helping financial institutions launch and scale stablecoins and related products through a single API.It is reported that Checker has processed over $3 billion in transaction volume in the past 12 months. The company plans to use the new funds to expand its financial institution network to Brazil, Kenya, Hong Kong, and the United States, and also intends to launch AI agents for client onboarding, compliance assessment, and treasury operations. (theblock)