News linked to this event type.
Odaily Odaily reports, stablecoin yield infrastructure project Osero announced the completion of a $13.5 million funding round, led by Sky Ecosystem, with co-leading from Plasma. Participating investors include RedStone, The Rollup, Kairos Research, as well as several crypto institutions and industry executives such as Joe Flanagan and Lorenzo Romagnoli. Osero was co-incubated by Stablewatch and Soter Labs, a governance and operations institution associated with the Sky Ecosystem. The project focuses on building savings and yield infrastructure around the Sky stablecoin system USDS and its yield-bearing asset sUSDS. It is reported that the funding round was initiated in December 2024 and completed in March 2026, utilizing a SAFT structure for issuance. The valuation was not disclosed. (The Block)
According to market sources, AI startup Wispr is in funding negotiations with a valuation of $2 billion.
crypto research institution Delphi Digital has released its latest report, "How Far Can Saylor Stretch It," providing a systematic analysis of Strategy's Bitcoin (BTC) capital expansion mechanism. It indicates that the company's financing structure is transitioning from a phase of "low-cost accumulation" into one of "diminishing marginal efficiency."The report shows that within the current asset accumulation system centered on Bitcoin, STRC has become the core financing tool for Strategy's continued BTC purchases. Initially, the company relied on a significant premium in MSTR's stock price (with mNAV far exceeding BTC's net asset value) to create a positive cycle where "issuing shares meant increasing holdings." However, as valuations have receded to approximately 1.24 times the base mNAV of enterprise value, the BTC-per-share accretion effect from common stock issuance is approaching a break-even point.Meanwhile, while convertible bonds have played a crucial role historically, they have accumulated a principal of approximately $8.2 billion and face concentrated repayment pressure after September 2027, putting long-term strain on the sustainability of the financing structure.STRC provides Strategy with a continuous source of financing—used to maintain its BTC buying pace—by offering yield-seeking investors an approximately 11.5% annualized monthly dividend. However, this mechanism also introduces ongoing cash flow obligations, meaning that each round of financing simultaneously builds future dividend burdens while increasing BTC assets.The report emphasizes a key risk scenario: if BTC's price remains stagnant and MSTR's premium fails to recover, the "gains from STRC-financed coin purchases" could be progressively offset by "common stock dilution and dividend obligations." Although the company's approximately $2.25 billion cash reserve can cover its roughly $1 billion redemption pressure in 2027, its larger debt and dividend structure in 2028 remains unresolved.Furthermore, STRC's current authorized issuance limit of approximately $28.3 billion serves as a critical constraint. Once this limit is reached, the capacity for new BTC purchases may slow, yet existing dividend obligations will persist—thereby altering the overall dynamic growth trajectory of BTC per share.
Odaily AI security startup Depthfirst has announced that its self-developed AI model outperforms Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, in code vulnerability detection. It has discovered more critical security vulnerabilities at approximately one-tenth the cost, drawing attention from the cybersecurity industry.According to the company, a month before the launch of Mythos, it had previously claimed to have found a large number of severe vulnerabilities in key internet infrastructure code. Depthfirst now says its model has further identified multiple high-risk vulnerabilities that Mythos missed, all at a lower cost (approximately $1,000 compared to $10,000).Depthfirst CEO Qasim Mithani stated that the company has improved vulnerability detection efficiency through a “single-task-optimized AI model,” significantly reducing the cost of security analysis while enhancing coverage depth.The company completed $80 million in funding in March this year, achieving a valuation of $580 million. Alongside this, it launched the “Open Defense Initiative,” providing $5 million worth of AI detection credits to open-source developers and critical infrastructure projects for vulnerability scanning and security audits. (Forbes)
Franklin Templeton, the parent company of Kraken and a global asset management giant, has announced a collaboration with Kraken to develop on-chain investment products and advance the tokenization of traditional financial assets. The two parties will combine Franklin Templeton's experience in asset tokenization and compliant fund issuance with Kraken's trading, custody, and global user infrastructure, focusing on launching compliant products such as tokenized funds and on-chain wealth management. This initiative aims to bridge the connection between traditional finance and the crypto market. (Coindesk)
According to Bloomberg, London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic Enterprises Ltd. has raised $120 million in a new funding round led by One Peak Partners LLP, with participation from Deutsche Bank and Nasdaq’s venture capital arm. The company’s post-money valuation stands at $670 million. Simone Maini, CEO of Elliptic, stated that the funds will be used to scale service adoption and expand its global business footprint. Against the backdrop of this financing round, major traditional financial institutions are intensifying their strategic investments in the digital assets space.
Odaily Odaily: Blockchain analytics company Elliptic has completed a new $120 million funding round at a valuation of approximately $670 million. The round was led by One Peak Partners, with participation from Deutsche Bank, the venture arm of Nasdaq, and the British Business Bank. Existing investors, including JPMorgan Chase, also followed on.Founded in 2013, Elliptic provides crypto transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance tools for financial institutions and law enforcement agencies. The company currently screens over 1 billion transactions weekly for more than 700 clients, supporting the compliance operations needed for large banks, asset managers, and fintech companies to conduct digital asset business.
SAP, Europe's largest software giant, has invested in the workflow automation platform n8n. This funding round directly doubled n8n's valuation to $5.2 billion, marking a significant move in SAP's continued expansion in the AI sector. Additionally, SAP has signed a multi-year cooperation agreement with n8n to embed its tools into SAP's own AI agent development platform, Joule Studio. The partnership was officially announced on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
Genius Group, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin treasury company, has disclosed a strategic investment of $5 million in digital bank Jewel Bank, acquiring a 9.9% equity stake in the company. It is reported that Jewel Bank is developing a U.S. dollar stablecoin, JUSD, planned to be backed by a 1:1 reserve of cash and U.S. Treasury bonds, with a target launch in the second half of 2026. The bank will also launch a real-time settlement system and offer white-label banking and stablecoin infrastructure services for enterprises. Following this investment, Genius Group will enter the regulated digital banking and stablecoin issuance sector. (Globenewswire)
AI character economy platform Charms Interactive has announced the completion of a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round, with participation from Lattice, JME, Coinbase Ventures (Base Ecosystem Fund), Gidorah (Echo), and others. Charms has simultaneously launched its product, Charms.ai, aiming to upgrade "AI characters" from application features to tradable, ownable, and sustainable on-chain economic assets. (Decrypt)
According to Odaily, AI startup White Circle has completed an $11 million seed funding round, with participation from Romain Huet of OpenAI, Durk Kingma of Anthropic, and several other executives from prominent AI companies. The company provides a unified API for real-time monitoring of large model inputs and outputs, used to detect hallucinations, prompt injection attacks, harmful content, model drift, and malicious user behavior. It also supports custom security policies (such as rate limiting and banning) and automated governance. (Techfundingnews)
Bernstein has reiterated its "Outperform" rating on Figure Technology Solutions (FIGR) and maintained a price target of $67, implying approximately 72% upside from the current share price of $38.97.Figure posted strong Q1 2026 results: loan origination volume reached $2.9 billion, up 113% year-over-year; adjusted revenue was $167 million, surpassing market expectations by 6% and up 92% year-over-year; adjusted EBITDA was $82.7 million, with a margin of approximately 50%, slightly above market consensus. However, GAAP diluted EPS was $0.18, missing expectations by about 9%, primarily impacted by $26 million in stock-based compensation expenses.Bernstein analysts believe this performance should reshape market perception of Figure, viewing it not as a traditional credit company, but as a "tokenization-driven capital markets platform." Core profitability stems from network fees and operational leverage from scaling, and the valuation framework remains based on 25x 2027 EBITDA. Additionally, the tokenization ecosystem continues to expand: the yield-bearing security token YLDS reached $598 million (up 80% quarter-over-quarter); the stock lending product balance stood at $368 million (up 79%); and the small business loan segment contributed $60 million in revenue.Figure's current share price remains not far from its 2025 IPO offering price of $36, but still significantly below its all-time high of $78. (The Block)
Coincheck Group, a Nasdaq-listed company, announced a strategic investment and business cooperation agreement with Japanese telecom giant KDDI Corporation. KDDI will subscribe to 28,536,516 newly issued common shares of Coincheck Group at a price of $2.28 per share, with a total transaction value of approximately $65 million. JPMorgan served as financial advisor, and De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP served as legal advisors. It is reported that the two parties will collaborate on expanding the digital asset market, including revenue sharing and referral incentive mechanisms. (Businesswire)
Odaily Odaily News According to the latest weekly report from Gate Ventures, global markets continued to strengthen last week, driven by the technology sector. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq index hit new record highs, with the S&P 500 gaining 2.36% for the week and the Nasdaq rising 4.52%. In the crypto market, BTC rose 4.6% last week, ETH rose 2.1%, spot BTC ETFs recorded net inflows for the fifth consecutive week, and market sentiment recovered to the neutral range. Additionally, the total market cap of cryptocurrencies excluding the top ten assets increased by 12.6% for the week.On the macroeconomic front, the ISM Services Price Index rose to 70.7, a two-year high, coupled with energy price fluctuations and the Federal Reserve's policy expectation of "keeping interest rates higher for longer," leading to increased market focus on a "stagflation" environment. On the industry level, Payward, the parent company of Kraken, has applied to the OCC for a national trust charter, highlighting the increasingly evident trend of industry compliance. In terms of investment and financing, 10 deals were completed last week totaling $34.2 million, primarily concentrated in the DeFi and infrastructure sectors. Among them, OpenTrade completed a $17 million funding round to accelerate the development of institutional-grade stablecoin yield infrastructure; OnRe secured a $5 million Series A round to advance its Solana-based tokenized reinsurance product offerings.
According to CoinDesk, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced it will leverage Chainlink’s infrastructure to power its blockchain-based collateral management platform, Collateral AppChain. Built on the Besu blockchain, the platform utilizes Chainlink’s Compute Runtime Environment (CRE) and data standards to support asset pricing, valuation, margin calculation, collateral optimization, and settlement. Through smart contracts, it enables 24/7 automated collateral management—aiming to address the current delays in cross-institutional and cross-time-zone movement of assets within existing collateral systems.
According to The Block, research and brokerage firm Bernstein has maintained its “Outperform” rating on Circle Internet Group (CRCL), with a target price of $190—representing approximately 44% upside from Monday’s closing price of $131.76. Analysts led by Gautam Chhugani noted that Circle’s $222 million ARC token presale—completed at a fully diluted valuation of $3 billion—provides the company with near-term cushioning against a 11% sequential decline in reserve income driven by weakening interest rates.
Robinhood has filed for the public offering of its second venture capital fund, RVII, approximately two months after the listing of its first fund, RVI. Robinhood stated that RVII’s fundraising target has not yet been determined; RVI previously targeted $1 billion but raised less than that amount. Public records indicate that RVI holds stakes in 10 private companies, including OpenAI, Stripe, Databricks, and Revolut. Robinhood noted that both funds enable retail investors to purchase publicly traded shares linked to portfolios of private startups through standard brokerage accounts.
According to CoinDesk, Payward, Kraken’s parent company, is seeking new funding at a $2 billion valuation. Payward has recently accelerated its acquisition efforts, acquiring stablecoin payments firm Reap and digital asset derivatives platform Bitnomial—both transactions valued the company at $2 billion. Earlier, in 2025, Payward completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of U.S. retail futures platform NinjaTrader. Payward has confidentially filed a draft S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in preparation for a potential IPO. Kraken declined to comment on the latest funding round.
稳定币基础设施初创公司 Boundary Labs 宣布完成 200 万美元 Pre-Seed 轮融资，Galaxy Ventures 领投，First Block Capital、BlackWood 等机构参投，该公司计划于 2026 年夏季在以太坊主网上线机构级稳定币 USBD 及质押版本 sUSBD。据介绍，USBD 将支持每日链上披露储备状态、净资产价值（NAV）以及协议运行数据，并采用超额抵押与 Delta Neutral（市场中性）对冲策略，以降低市场波动与方向性风险。Boundary 强调，其协议不会使用递归杠杆，并要求所有收益来源保持 Delta Neutral 结构。（The Block）
Odaily Odaily News: In the OpenAI lawsuit, Satya Nadella testified in court as Microsoft's CEO at the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California. The case centers on the ongoing legal dispute over OpenAI's non-profit structure and its path to commercialization. The lawsuit, filed by Elon Musk in 2024, accuses Microsoft of "aiding and abetting the breach of charitable trust obligations" during OpenAI's transition from a non-profit organization to a commercial entity. Microsoft has been making strategic investments in OpenAI since 2019, with cumulative investments reaching approximately $13 billion by 2023, making it one of OpenAI's most important external supporters.During the trial, Satya Nadella reviewed the early partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI, mentioning that the two parties had established deep technological and computing power collaboration before the launch of ChatGPT. In his earlier testimony, Musk stated that Microsoft's additional investment of approximately $10 billion in OpenAI in 2023 was the key turning point that prompted him to file the lawsuit, adding that the scale of the investment altered OpenAI's original non-profit-oriented structure. During the trial, Musk stated: "We are concerned they are turning a charitable organization into a commercial tool." He also questioned Microsoft's potential dominant position in the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and pointed out that its deep integration with OpenAI could impact the competitive landscape of the industry.The case is currently still under trial, and the debate surrounding OpenAI's governance structure, non-profit status, and control over the AI industry is expected to continue. (CNBC)