News linked to both this project and an event.
According to Tech in Asia, Special, an AI-powered M&A firm co-founded by Nate Cavanaugh and Justin Fox—both former staff members of the U.S. government’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)—has announced a funding round of undisclosed amount, led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Investors include Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners; Anthony Armstrong, former CFO of xAI; Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase Global; and Shyam Sankar, CTO of Palantir Technologies. Special plans to acquire service-based businesses by automating workflows with AI to reduce costs, and has already reached an agreement to acquire a Texas-based healthcare company, which will be integrated into Figure Health—the company’s business line focused on aging populations.
According to FINsmes, sports “momentum market” SpeedLabs announced the completion of a $6.5 million seed funding round, led by Parlay Capital, with participation from Bullpen Capital, TA Ventures, and EdgeEquity. Unlike traditional prediction models, SpeedLabs has built a market engine designed for live sporting events—capable of reading real-time game dynamics and instantly creating and pricing markets based on in-game developments, enabling users to trade on shifts in game momentum. The company believes these newly generated, real-time event momentum markets represent the next growth frontier for prediction markets.
Odaily reports: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced at the GTC conference in Taipei that the company has selected China's Unitree as its first humanoid robot AI platform partner for universities and research institutions. Together, they will launch the Isaac GR00T reference design, accelerating the arrival of the "Physical AI" era.The platform deeply integrates Unitree's H2 humanoid robot (approximately 1.8 meters tall, weighing 68 kg) with Nvidia's Jetson Thor computing platform, Blackwell GPU, Isaac GR00T model, and simulation software. It is also equipped with Singapore-based Sharpa's dexterous hand. The platform is open to top global research institutions, with the first batch including Stanford, ETH Zurich, UCSD, and Ai2. Jensen Huang emphasized that this initiative aims to lower the barrier to entry for humanoid robot development by providing an out-of-the-box, full-stack development environment. He believes that "Physical AI" will be the next wave following generative AI, with a long-term market size potentially reaching tens of trillions of dollars.The upgraded version, the H2 Plus, is expected to be available and open for general sale in October 2026. Notably, Unitree is planning an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market), aiming to raise 4.2 billion yuan. Over 40% of its revenue comes from overseas, highlighting its significant global presence. (Techstartups)
Mecka AI, a startup specializing in robot AI training data, has announced the completion of a total of $60 million in funding. This includes a $25 million Series A round in November last year and a subsequent $35 million top-up investment. Both rounds were led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and other investors.Founded in 2025, the company currently employs around 40 people. It leverages sensors, smartphones, and custom hardware to collect human motion data—such as gestures and gait—for robot training. Differentiating itself from traditional teleoperation-based training methods, this approach enhances robots' ability to adapt to real-world environments. The company currently has a strong order backlog and an estimated annualized revenue run rate that could reach $100 million.Investors noted that Mecka AI is one of the fastest-growing companies in their portfolio by revenue. Going forward, the company plans to extend its business chain into robot model training and deployment, accelerating the commercialization of related technologies. (Fortune)
According to TechFundingNews, stablecoin payments company NALA announced it has secured a $50 million credit facility from Liquidity through Mars Growth Capital, its joint venture with Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG). The new capital will be used to develop its stablecoin payment infrastructure, with a focus on expanding cross-border payments in emerging markets—including Africa and Asia—by offering real-time stablecoin-based payments and collections, pre-funded accounts, and treasury management services. Earlier, in July 2024, NALA closed a $40 million Series A round led by investors including Acrew Capital, DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital, and Amplo, as well as angel investors Vlad Tenev, co-founder of Robinhood, and Ryan King, co-founder of Chime.
Odaily Seer monitoring shows that the prediction market Predict.fun has launched a new prediction event: "What will be the market cap ranking of CXMT at close on its IPO day," with total trading volume currently at $93,000.On May 27, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a leading domestic memory chip company, successfully passed its IPO review on the STAR Market (SSE STAR) and plans to raise 29.5 billion yuan, which would mark the second-largest IPO in the history of the STAR Market. Benefiting from the memory industry upcycle, CXMT reported a Q1 2026 revenue of 50.8 billion yuan and a net profit attributable to parent company of 24.762 billion yuan for the single quarter, achieving a dramatic turnaround from losses to profits year-over-year. This strong earnings potential has sparked extremely high market expectations for its post-listing valuation, with some suggesting it could challenge the top tier of A-share market capitalizations. According to the settlement rules, this event will ultimately be settled based on the descending order of total market capitalization from the "Shanghai-Shenzhen-Beijing A-shares" section of East Money (东方财富网) at market close.Odaily Seer continues to monitor prediction markets, observing changes before prices are set.
Hypernova has announced the completion of a $3 million pre-seed funding round, led by Lemniscap, with participation from Very Early Ventures, CMS Holdings, Pivot Global, and multiple angel investors from the Hyperliquid ecosystem.The project's main business is building a proprietary trading platform on Hyperliquid, using smart contracts to automate trader payouts, and dynamically determining whether to push positions to market based on trader quality. (The Block)
TownSquare, an infrastructure provider for institutional yields and cross-chain lending brokerage services, has partnered with Native, a non-custodial automated trading infrastructure, to launch a $10 million yield-generating vault on the Monad L1. This vault will support assets including USD1, USDC, cbBTC, and MON, offering higher yields than conventional lending through trading-based yield generation. This marks TownSquare’s first collaboration with a trading-based yield manager. The partnership aims to bring real-world asset (RWA) and stablecoin institutional yields to a broader user base. Native is a close partner of Binance Wallet and Buidlpad, having previously launched vaults for BNB and wETH on BNB Chain and Ethereum—demonstrating its stability, scalability, and ability to generate yields for liquidity providers (LPs) managing tens of millions of dollars. This initiative also represents the first trading-yield vault on the Monad chain. Native already operates credit pools across multiple EVM chains with over $35 million in liquidity, achieving daily trading volumes of $50–100 million and cumulative trading volume exceeding $25 billion. Its Proactive Market Making (PMM) structure enables retail users to access institutional-grade trading yields. TownSquare previously launched a $100 million USD1 liquidity program and has raised over $16 million to date—including funding from this collaboration.
Nasdaq-listed Alpha Compute has announced the completion of its acquisition of a majority stake in GAMEE, a gaming and digital rewards platform, securing a 60% controlling interest. The transaction has now met all regulatory and closing conditions.According to the agreement, Alpha Compute acquired GAMEE from Animoca Brands for a consideration of approximately $11 million, implying an enterprise valuation of roughly $18 million. The transaction structure includes cash, stock, and future performance-based earnouts, along with an EBITDA milestone incentive clause over two years. Additionally, approximately 878 million GMEE tokens associated with Animoca are also included in the transaction arrangement.Following the transaction, Alpha Compute will establish a new AI gaming division named Alpha Games, with GAMEE founder Bozena Rezab serving as Executive Vice President. GAMEE will be integrated into Alpha Compute's AI infrastructure system, working in synergy with its GPU computing platform.
According to CoinPost, Japanese stablecoin issuer JPYC announced the completion of its Series B funding round, raising approximately $32 million. New investors include four institutions, such as Life Design Fund. Since its launch in October 2025, JPYC’s business has grown significantly—reaching 18,000 user accounts and over $220 million in total transaction volume within seven months. JPYC is now supported on four blockchains and has been officially adopted by LINE’s Web3 wallet “Unifi.” The company plans to use the funds to accelerate system development and advance real-world applications of JPYC in AI-powered automated payments and cross-border financial infrastructure.
on May 22 that the new-generation Perp DEX PopDEX has announced the completion of a $30 million funding round, led by Foresight Ventures. PopDEX is a decentralized perpetual contract trading platform centered on traders, focusing on capital efficiency, trading experience, and value distribution mechanisms, aiming to build an on-chain derivatives trading platform driven by real trading activity.The team stated that the funds will be used to inject initial liquidity into the project, enhance trading depth and capital efficiency, accelerate product development, and expand the team and market. PopDEX has already begun inviting select top-tier traders to participate in internal testing and will continuously optimize the product experience based on early user feedback. The internal testing phase will focus on refining aspects such as the trading process, capital efficiency, product interaction, risk control, and user experience, preparing for a wider public beta test and subsequent product launch.
the Avalanche Foundation has announced the formation of an independent review committee to evaluate research proposals submitted under its "Call For Research Program" and provide up to $50,000 in funding for original academic research on the economics of decentralized networks. The committee comprises members from Ava Labs, the Avalanche Foundation, and external scholars specializing in economics, finance, and decentralized network design, aiming to select projects with long-term research value based on strict academic standards.The program covers two main research areas: crypto asset pricing and valuation, as well as validator economics and network security mechanism design. Evaluation criteria include research relevance, methodological rigor, innovation, feasibility, and the background of the research team.Emin Gün Sirer stated that Avalanche has been built on a foundation of academic research from the very beginning, and this program aims to continue that tradition while advancing the understanding and application of core economic issues related to decentralized networks. Committee members also include renowned scholars such as Campbell Harvey, Fahad Saleh, and Agostino Capponi, along with key members such as the Investment Director and Chief Economist of the Avalanche Foundation.
According to Bloomberg, the three founders of Manus are exploring multiple options to comply with Beijing’s requirement to unwind Meta Platforms Inc.’s acquisition of the company—including raising approximately $1 billion from external investors to repurchase the China-founded AI firm. Sources familiar with the matter said the three founders are in discussions regarding a funding round valued at no less than the $2 billion Meta paid; the founders may also personally fund the remainder of the transaction. If this plan moves forward, the next step could involve first establishing a China-based joint venture with relevant investors, followed by an IPO in Hong Kong.
According to a report by WSJ, Anthropic's revenue is expected to reach $10.9 billion in the second quarter, more than doubling from $4.8 billion in the first quarter, and the company is projected to achieve operational profitability for the first time. However, due to its massive computing power demands, profitability may not be sustained throughout the entire year. The operating profit calculation has already factored in costs for training new models but excludes stock-based compensation expenses.As part of an ongoing funding round, Anthropic disclosed these figures to investors. This funding round is likely to push its valuation above that of OpenAI.Last summer, Anthropic shared financial data with investors, which at the time indicated that the company would not achieve full-year profitability until at least 2028.
According to CoinDesk, cryptocurrency custody firm Copper is seeking to sell the company at a valuation of approximately $500 million and has engaged Wall Street investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald to assist with the transaction. Copper’s core asset is its ClearLoop custody-based settlement system, which enables institutional clients to execute delivery versus payment (DvP) transactions without moving assets on-chain, effectively eliminating settlement risk. The company currently boasts over 1,000 active counterparties and processes over $50 billion in notional trading volume monthly. Copper had previously considered an IPO, but the broader crypto IPO market has entered a wait-and-see phase amid sluggish Bitcoin prices and the capital-attracting effect of the AI sector.
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.
According to Reuters, Polymarket has partnered with Nasdaq to launch a prediction market for private companies, enabling users to trade based on valuation, IPO timing, and secondary-market valuations.
SpaceX plans to proceed with its initial public offering (IPO) next month. If successfully listed, it could unlock an equity return opportunity of approximately $20 billion for D1 Capital Partners, a Wall Street institution founded by Dan Sundheim. The estimate is reportedly based on assumptions of SpaceX’s latest valuation, reflecting its high ownership concentration in the private market and potential paper gains for institutional investors. (Financial Times)
According to CoinDesk, Simone Maini, CEO of blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, stated that the biggest emerging risk to crypto security is not larger-scale hacking attacks, but rather AI-driven financial activity operating at a speed and scale that human compliance teams cannot keep up with. As AI lowers the barriers to hacking, scams, and fraud, security firms like Elliptic are responding by deploying AI agents to analyze on-chain data in real time—sparking an automated arms race between adversaries and defenders. Maini noted that current compliance systems remain heavily reliant on manual review, and the global pool of compliance analysts specializing in digital assets is simply insufficient to meet future demand. Elliptic has raised $120 million in funding—including from Nasdaq and Deutsche Bank—to build an “agent-based compliance system” that leverages AI to automate transaction monitoring and investigation workflows, thereby reducing the cost per alert and per investigation.
RWA trading platform MSX has announced that the second phase of its Pre-IPO segment is expected to officially open for subscription on May 16, 2026. The targets listed in this phase are AI large model leader Anthropic and prediction market representative platform Polymarket. The subscription price for Anthropic is 855U, with a valuation of $950 billion. The subscription price for Polymarket is set at 152U, with a valuation of $15 billion.MSX's first Pre-IPO project, Cerebras ($CBRS.M), has completed a closed loop from Pre-IPO subscription to spot trading upon IPO listing. Participating users achieved a yield of over 300% based on a subscription price of 100.35U. For details on the specific subscription quota, fee standards, and subsequent settlement arrangements for the second-phase projects, users can log in to the MSX platform page for more information.