fundraising

The founder of the AI agency platform Bankr, deployer, tweeted that he has raised about $100,000 to provide free LLM inference services for Bankr ecosystem projects. Projects currently being built in the Bankr ecosystem will soon be able to access free inference credits. However, before officially starting the distribution, the team will first launch a new feature that "the entire industry will love," with specific details to be announced later.

According to BBX data, institutional demand for Bitcoin ETFs maintained strong momentum yesterday. Today, both houses of Congress are advancing cryptocurrency legislation simultaneously for the first time, with the core dynamics as follows:The U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF recorded a total net inflow of approximately $358.1 million yesterday (May 13), with BlackRock, Inc. (NYSE: $BLK) subsidiary iShares Bitcoin Trust (NASDAQ: $IBIT) seeing a single-day net inflow of $269.3 million, the strongest single-day data in recent weeks; the overall U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF has recorded net positive inflows for seven consecutive weeks, further reinforcing the structural signal of institutional capital returning. Bitcoin closed above $80,000 yesterday, with a year-to-date increase of about 14%, and market sentiment remains relatively optimistic on the eve of the CLARITY Act markup.The House Ways & Means Committee held a closed-door meeting today (May 14) on cryptocurrency tax reform in sync with the Senate Banking Committee's CLARITY Act markup, covering topics such as the treatment of capital gains tax on crypto assets, tax reporting responsibilities for DeFi protocols, and the tax classification of Bitcoin mining and staking income; this marks the first time in 2026 that both houses of Congress are advancing cryptocurrency regulatory legislation on the same day, indicating that cryptocurrency regulatory legislation has expanded from a single market structure issue to a complete legislative ecosystem of "regulatory framework + tax system."

Due to the impact of preOPAI fundraising, according to DeFiLlama data, the net inflow of funds to Bitget in the past 24 hours reached 46.17 million USD, ranking first among CEX platforms.

According to Cointelegraph citing Bloomberg, the U.S. House fundraising committee will hold a closed-door bipartisan briefing on cryptocurrency tax issues this Thursday.

DeepSeek plans to raise up to 50 billion yuan.Deepseek plans to release the V4 model update in June.

According to PR Newswire, Global Millennial Capital (GMCL) announced that its first "IPO Opportunities Fund" has completed a final fundraising of $100 million, with investors including family offices from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, as well as international wealth management institutions. The fund will provide investment opportunities in technology companies approaching liquidity events through private placements for professional and institutional investors.The fund primarily targets mid-sized technology companies with market capitalizations between $5 billion and $20 billion, focusing on areas such as artificial intelligence and DeFi technology, and emphasizing companies with scalable business models, stable revenue structures, and mature governance systems.GMCL stated that these mid-sized technology companies are in the early stages of value release but are often overlooked by large funds and early investors. The fund's strategy will focus on participating in critical stages before a company's IPO or strategic exit while strengthening risk management and investment discipline.

According to The Block, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's crypto branch a16z crypto has completed fundraising for its fifth fund, totaling $2.2 billion. This fund is smaller than the record $4.5 billion raised for the fourth fund in 2022.a16z crypto communications partner Paul Cafiero stated that the company intends to return to a smaller fund size because "a shorter fundraising cycle allows us to keep up with the rapidly changing crypto trends." The previous fund sizes for a16z crypto were $2.2 billion for the third fund in 2021, $515 million for the second fund in 2020, and $350 million for the first fund in 2018.a16z crypto also announced the promotion of CTO Eddy Lazzarin to general partner (GP), making him the fourth general partner alongside Chris Dixon, Ali Yahya, and Guy Wuollet.a16z crypto noted that while the market is in a relatively calm phase, adoption signals are improving, pointing out that the use of stablecoins continues to grow, and the application of blockchain in capital markets is becoming increasingly widespread, including perpetual contracts for price discovery, prediction markets for information aggregation, and on-chain lending for stablecoin credit markets. The company also cited the GENIUS Act as an example of a clearer regulatory framework, maintaining a "hopeful and optimistic" attitude towards the Clarity Act passed this year. The fund will focus 100% on investments in the crypto space and will not expand into adjacent areas such as AI or robotics.a16z crypto has previously invested in projects such as Coinbase, Uniswap, Solana, Kalshi, Anchorage Digital, and Phantom. Other crypto venture capital firms have also been active recently, with Haun Ventures completing fundraising for its second fund of $1 billion earlier this week, Dragonfly recently completing its fourth fund of $650 million, and Paradigm reportedly seeking up to $1.5 billion for a broader fund, while Blockchain Capital is also raising approximately $700 million.

According to market news, Silicon Valley's top investor Peter Thiel's venture capital fund Founders Fund has raised $6 billion to invest in late-stage companies, marking the largest fundraising in the institution's history.Most of the funds—$4.5 billion—come from limited partners, including sovereign wealth funds. A source familiar with the matter stated that the remaining $1.5 billion comes from senior management and employees of Founders Fund, including Peter Thiel himself. The fund's fourth growth-stage investment fund was quickly established less than a year after the launch of the previous fund, making it the fastest transition to a new fund in Founders Fund's twenty-year history.The rapid launch of a larger fund reflects the rising demand for substantial financing from mature-stage startups, which are increasingly inclined to raise funds from private investors rather than the public market. Other venture capital firms are also raising billions of dollars for late-stage investments, partly because tech companies need more capital to afford expensive computing resources. For example, Sequoia Capital recently raised about $7 billion for a new fund to increase investments in large companies; Thrive Capital has also raised a fund of $10 billion, marking its largest scale in history.

According to Techfundingnews, SpaceX's early investor 137 Ventures announced that its two new funds have completed fundraising of over $700 million, increasing its assets under management (AUM) to over $15 billion. The new funds will support its pursuit of investment opportunities in areas such as AI agents, robotics, and aerospace propulsion.It is reported that 137 Ventures currently holds more than 1% of SpaceX's shares. As SpaceX is expected to seek an IPO this year, with a valuation potentially exceeding $1 trillion, the value of 137 Ventures' holdings may exceed $10 billion.

Printr founder Jason Ma announced on the X platform that he is stepping down as CEO, with COO and GTM head Lennon immediately taking over as CEO, while co-founder Lea will continue to serve as CTO. He will transition to an advisory role.At the same time, Printr announced that it will fully refund the community fundraising, with the related refund process expected to be announced within 7 days. The team stated that this move aims to rebuild community trust, and the platform's products, team, and development roadmap will remain unchanged.

SpaceX will hold a three-day closed-door analyst meeting in the United States this week to promote its business and strategy to Wall Street institutions in preparation for a potential IPO. According to insiders, the company aims to raise about $75 billion, with a valuation possibly reaching $1.75 trillion, with plans to go public as early as June.The meeting will cover SpaceX's Texas Starbase launch site and Tennessee data center project, and participating analysts will need to submit electronic devices to ensure information confidentiality. This roadshow is a key part of the IPO process, and there will be subsequent model presentations to further disclose financial and growth expectations. In addition, the company plans to reserve about 30% of shares for retail investors and expand into global markets. Several Wall Street investment banks have already participated in the underwriting arrangements.

The Smarter Web Company, a UK Bitcoin treasury company, announced that it has completed a private placement of 4,286,410 shares of common stock according to a previously signed subscription agreement. This placement raised approximately £1.5374 million (about $2 million, before expenses), equivalent to about £0.36 per share. The company expects to receive approximately 98.25% of the net proceeds, and the remaining balance of common stock under the current subscription agreement that has not yet been placed is 52,377,540 shares.

The Nasdaq-listed Bitcoin mining company TeraWulf announced that it has completed the previously announced public offering of 54,510,000 shares of common stock, with an offering price of $19 per share, raising a total of $1,035,690,000. Morgan Stanley acted as the lead underwriter for this offering, while Bank of America Securities, Citigroup, TD Cowen, and Wells Fargo Securities served as co-managers.Citizens Capital Markets and Santander Bank acted as sub-underwriters, and Cantor Fitzgerald served as the equity capital markets advisor. TeraWulf plans to use the net proceeds from this offering to pay for a portion of the construction costs of its planned data center campus in Horse Cave, Kentucky, including the full repayment of outstanding amounts under its transitional credit facility, as well as for future site acquisitions and general corporate purposes.

The newly established political action committee in the crypto industry, Fellowship PAC, has raised approximately $11 million, with $10 million coming from Cantor Fitzgerald and $1 million from Anchorage Digital. It has spent about $3 million on political advertising, with this portion of the expenses paid to Nxum Group, which was co-founded by Tether US CEO Bo Hines.The PAC primarily supports Republican candidates and invests funds in congressional and state-level elections. Although the organization has ties to Tether executives, its main funding sources are financial institutions, and it is currently unclear whether Tether can directly participate in related political donations.

According to Jinshi News, Tether is launching a final sprint for financing with a valuation of $500 billion, urging investors to commit to an agreement in the next two weeks.

According to tracking data from the Web3 asset data platform RootData X, in the past 7 days, the decentralized fundraising platform Avalaunch has been the project that X (Twitter) top figures have unfollowed the most. The new influential figures on X who have unfollowed this project include zac.eth (@zacxbt) and 默默 (@momochenming).

According to the Economic Observer, Ba Shusong, the chief economist of the China Banking Association and a senior advisor at the HSBC Business School of Peking University, is suspected of being involved in an illegal fundraising case and was taken away by the authorities around March 12, 2026, since then he has been "out of contact" with the outside world.Insiders say that the case may be related to an illegal fundraising project led by his students, and Ba Shusong has been restricted from leaving the country for at least six months. His affiliated institution and he himself have not publicly responded to the relevant situation.