News linked to both this project and an event.
Odaily reports: AI compute startup General Compute has completed a $100 million Series A funding round, led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with a post-money valuation of $800 million, a significant increase from the $60 million valuation after its seed round in May this year. The funding was driven by an order from a large customer with $100 million in annual recurring revenue.General Compute focuses on AI inference compute, using specialized chips from NVIDIA competitors, and has reached a $400 million chip procurement agreement with SambaNova, with suppliers also including Positron and Cerebras. Unlike the traditional approach of building large data centers, the company deploys AI compute by leasing data center space, utilizing smaller-scale power resources, and retrofitting Bitcoin mining farms, with plans to deploy 75 megawatts of compute capacity by 2027. Amid CoreWeave's stock falling to near a 12-month low and Elon Musk's prediction that more than 200 new cloud service providers will undergo elimination and consolidation, General Compute co-founder and CEO Finn Puklowski believes that market fears of a chip-induced industry collapse are severely exaggerated, and customer demand for various chips and compute remains strong.PANews, October 27: According to reports, AI compute startup General Compute has completed a $100 million Series A funding round, led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with a post-money valuation of $800 million, a significant increase from the $60 million valuation after its seed round in May this year. Currently, General Compute focuses on AI inference compute, using specialized chips from NVIDIA competitors, and has reached a $400 million chip procurement agreement with SambaNova, with suppliers also including Positron and Cerebras. (TechCrunch)
Odaily reports: Polygon's official X account today posted a "Polygon is not dead" announcement, seemingly mocking Abstract's shutdown. In response, Polygon founder Sandeep posted a statement saying that the content did not achieve the intended传播 effect, and many community users interpreted it in a completely different way. He himself was also confused when he saw the content, but it was clearly the Polygon marketing team's self-deprecation, because some people had always said that Polygon was already dead, while Polygon's fundamentals were steadily rising.Sandeep added that the content was not intended to allude to Abstract's shutdown, and emphasized that he deeply respects Abstract founder Luca Netz and his team, and would not mock Abstract. Polygon had also terminated the zkEVM project, so he knows that pain well. He hereby clarifies the misunderstanding and would not make fun of them over this, and wishes Luca and the Pudgy Penguins team all the best.
Luca Netz posted on X that Abstract is gradually shutting down, and its parent company Igloo Inc. will shift all of its focus to Pudgy Penguins, Pudgy NFTs, and PENGU. Igloo has continued to provide funding support for Abstract over the past 18 months. Over its two years of operation, the project has accumulated losses in the tens of millions of dollars and has still not found product-market fit (PMF).He said that Abstract had previously processed over 300 million onchain transactions, launched Portal and AGW, and attracted multiple global brands to join, but issues such as an insufficient DeFi ecosystem, limited liquidity, low institutional participation, high costs, and declining demand for related products continued to constrain growth. In the end, Igloo Inc. could no longer continue diverting funds from the Pudgy Penguins business to support Abstract, and it did not choose to raise funds through token issuance or an ICO.
Atum has announced the end of its stealth phase and completed a $13.5 million funding round backed by investors including Variant, PayPal Ventures, and Abstract Ventures. Atum connects payment companies, developers, and enterprises through a unified coordination layer, responsible for payment authorization, routing, and confirmation, but does not issue currency, operate a blockchain, or hold customer funds. Its network supports cross-chain and stablecoin settlements and is compatible with agent payment protocols such as x402 and MPP.