financing

XRPLRipple is actively promoting the addition of a layer of lending infrastructure on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), enabling institutions to use on-chain tokenized assets as collateral for financing, while the loan terms are automatically executed by the protocol, with credit assessments and lending decisions still made by off-chain institutions.According to reports, the proposal is named the XRPL Lending Protocol (corresponding to the XLS-65 and XLS-66 standards), which is currently still in the technical draft stage and must be approved through validator voting before it can go live on the mainnet, but it is already available for developer testing on the test network.The design of the protocol splits the lending process into two parts: on-chain mechanisms responsible for fund pool management, interest calculation, repayment execution, and default handling; while borrower credit assessments and loan term settings remain with traditional financial institutions to meet compliance requirements in different jurisdictions.Ripple states that this mechanism is primarily aimed at institutional short-term liquidity needs, such as in cross-border payment scenarios, where temporary financing is obtained through stablecoins or collateralized assets before settlement, to enhance capital efficiency.Analysts believe that this solution attempts to introduce a "rule-based lending infrastructure" similar to traditional finance while maintaining the open network attributes of XRPL, but it still faces competition from established on-chain lending protocols like Aave, Compound, and Maple.

Early space fintech company Nebex, founded by former Axiom Space CEO Tejpaul Bhatia, announced the completion of a $30,000,000 seed round financing, led by Google Ventures, a subsidiary of Alphabet.

According to a report by The Paper, the embodied intelligence company Zhi Ping Fang has recently completed a series of new financing, with a total amount of nearly 5 billion yuan (approximately 700 million USD), and a valuation exceeding 20 billion yuan, making it the first embodied intelligence company in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area to officially surpass a valuation of 20 billion yuan. Zhi Ping Fang stated that after the completion of this financing, it will accelerate the iteration and large-scale production process of the "robot brain," further solidifying its integrated capabilities of "model × hardware × scenario."

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) warned in its latest annual report that the bursting of the AI bubble, a rebound in inflation, and sovereign debt pressures are the three core risks currently threatening global economic prosperity. The report pointed out that if the returns on investment in the AI sector fall short of expectations, it could lead to the current capital expenditure boom evolving into a long-term investment contraction, triggering significant macroeconomic turbulence.The BIS specifically cautioned about the complex "circular financing" model within the AI industry chain, such as cross-shareholding and computing power binding procurement agreements between chip manufacturers and AI laboratories or cloud service providers. The institution emphasized that such transactions often lack transparency and pose the risk of the same asset being mortgaged multiple times. In addition, energy shocks caused by geopolitical conflicts could trigger a secondary rebound in inflation, compounded by high-leverage arbitrage trading by hedge funds in the government bond market, which would further exacerbate the fragility of the global financial system.

According to CoinDesk, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse stated in an interview with CNBC that he remains optimistic about Bitcoin but believes that Strategy's model of financing Bitcoin purchases through preferred stock has harmed the crypto market.Garlinghouse said, "Financial engineering will not drive long-term value." He believes that the long-term value of any digital asset comes from its utility and stated, "Michael Saylor's team is not focused on the right things, which harms the overall market."The focus of Garlinghouse's criticism is the financing mechanism used by Strategy to accumulate Bitcoin. For about the past year, Strategy has raised funds through the issuance of preferred stock to continue purchasing Bitcoin. Its STRC stock has an annual dividend yield of 11.5%, designed to trade close to $100.Garlinghouse pointed out that STRC is currently about 25% below that level, which is a "harsh denial" of the strategy. STRC hit an all-time low on Thursday, at one point trading about 26% below par value. Meanwhile, Strategy's common stock fell to its lowest level since February 2024, closing around $82 on Friday; Bitcoin dropped below $59,000.This week, Strategy's financing model is facing more pressure. CryptoQuant stated that Strategy should pause Bitcoin purchases and rebuild cash reserves. The coverage period for STRC dividend payments has shrunk from over 7 years to about 14 months. When STRC falls below $100, the mechanism of issuing stock and purchasing Bitcoin will stall, which is also the reason for the company to pause this mechanism.Benchmark-StoneX analyst Mark Palmer believes that Strategy's financing engine has simply become "less efficient," rather than having failed, and opposes comparing STRC to assets that have completely collapsed.

According to official news, AI-assisted development of the Web3 infrastructure layer Canopy has completed a $8.5 million seed round financing, with participation from Arrington Capital, Fenbushi Capital, Borderless Capital, and SNZ Capital.The raised funds will be used to support its mainnet launch, expansion of the engineering team, and the development of native AI development tools.

Stablecoin native payment company Daya has completed a $2.4 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Hivemind Capital, with participation from Lattice, Alliance, Globelink, and the Aptos Foundation. Daya was co-founded by Nigerian entrepreneurs Aleph L and Paul Joe, who previously co-founded Helicarrier (an early African crypto exchange and stablecoin remittance platform) and have worked at Circle, Microsoft, and Lyrik Ventures. It is reported that Daya aims to build a financial operating layer for cross-border businesses in Africa, integrating local banks, foreign exchange, crypto withdrawals and deposits, and payment processors through a single dashboard to achieve automated routing of optimal payment paths.

Former Ren Protocol founder Loong Wang announced the launch of the tokenized financial product settlement network Metal and completed a seed round financing co-led by Airwallex and Capital49, with Airwallex also joining as the first design partner. Metal was co-founded by Loong Wang and former Libra project partner lead Catherine Porter, aiming to build an institutional-grade full-stack infrastructure for tokenized financial products, natively supporting AI agents, authentication, and authorization, while providing global withdrawal and recharge channels covering 200 countries and 90 currencies.

The AI infrastructure project Orthogonal announced the completion of a $4.3 million financing round, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, and other institutions.

According to PR Newswire, the AI Agent infrastructure project Orthogonal announced the completion of a $4.3 million seed round financing, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Pioneer Fund, Decasonic, Blast, Outbound, Surreal, and others.Orthogonal positions itself as the underlying infrastructure for internet discovery, orchestration, and payment aimed at AI agents, providing a full suite of capabilities for service retrieval, cross-tool task automation, and on-chain instant payments.It is reported that the funds raised in this round will be used for core platform iterative development, expanding the engineering and marketing teams, continuously increasing the scale of platform developers, and improving the interconnectivity ecosystem for AI agents.

According to PR Newswire, AI Agent infrastructure company Sail Research announced the completion of $80 million in seed and Series A financing, led by Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, with participation from Redpoint Ventures, CRV, Theory Ventures, and others.Sail Research focuses on building infrastructure for AI Agents, aiming to address the computational power, cost, and operational limitations of current artificial intelligence systems in long-duration, multi-step tasks. Its API is compatible with OpenAI interfaces and supports mainstream open-source models such as DeepSeek and Gemma.

According to PR Newswire, AI infrastructure company Neurometric AI announced the completion of a $4 million financing round, with participation from Betaworks, ex-Ante, Everywhere.vc, and others.The company disclosed that it has officially launched an automated Token engineering platform to optimize the cost and performance management of AI Agent workloads, and the new funds will be used to expand the engineering and AI research teams.

According to Bloomberg, SK Hynix is expected to issue American Depositary Receipts on Nasdaq on July 10. This listing plan aims to raise nearly $30 billion and is expected to become one of the largest ADR issuances in history. The market generally believes that this move will significantly expand its global investor base and may drive a revaluation.Several asset management companies expect that if its valuation aligns with Micron, there is a 30% upside potential for the stock price in the coming year. A fund manager pointed out that SK Hynix should at least trade at a valuation level comparable to Micron, as demand for memory chips may continue to exceed supply in the coming years. This listing occurs during a rare boom period in the memory chip industry. The stock prices of Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics have all risen over 200% this year, marking the best annual performance in decades. The demand for HBM from AI servers is widely seen as a driving force behind a structural "memory supercycle."

AI company Mirendil announced the completion of a $200 million seed round financing, led by a16z and Kleiner Perkins, with participation from institutions like NVIDIA.The founding team consists of 20 researchers and engineers from leading institutions such as Anthropic, xAI, Google DeepMind, and OpenAI. a16z stated that Mirendil is building a system that can assist anyone in AI research and development, training models with expertise in cutting-edge AI research fields, and creating products around it to form a self-sustaining system that can autonomously address engineering problems and continuously advance without human intervention.

The predictive market analysis platform Polysights announced the completion of a $1.5 million financing round, with investors including YZi Labs S3, Maven 11 Capital, Varys Capital, Contribution Capital, and Edge Ventures.Polysights is building an automated and intelligent infrastructure for predictive markets. According to reports, Polysights is based on artificial intelligence technology and is aimed at individual traders and various institutions, enabling wallet-associated cluster screening, market anomaly detection, and the ability to analyze various trading strategies in predictive markets.

According to the Financial Times, the prediction market platform Kalshi is in talks with investors for a new round of financing, aiming for a valuation of approximately $40 billion, which could be completed as early as the third quarter of this year. Previously, Kalshi just completed a $1 billion financing last month, reaching a valuation of $22 billion, with investors including Coatue, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and Morgan Stanley.Data shows that Kalshi's trading volume exceeded $17 billion last month, a significant increase from less than $5 billion a year ago, with about 65% of the trading volume coming from sports event-related prediction contracts.

On-chain yield infrastructure startup Ground announced the completion of a $3.6 million Pre-seed financing round, led by Bain Capital Crypto and ParaFi, with participation from Nascent, Robot Ventures, Chapter One, Consonant Ventures, and others.It is reported that Ground primarily provides APIs for fintech companies and asset management institutions, enabling them to integrate on-chain yield products into existing applications without the need to build blockchain integration themselves. Its target customers include fintech platforms, digital banks, wealth management institutions, exchanges, and asset management companies for building yield, savings, and investment products.

Blockchain data infrastructure startup Cambrian has completed a $6 million seed round financing, led by Franklin Templeton and Polychain Capital, with participation from Flow Traders, Selini Capital, Paper Ventures, Nomad Capital, and others.Cambrian also previously secured $5.9 million in pre-seed financing led by a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator, bringing the total funding to $11.9 million. It is reported that Cambrian was established in 2024 and currently provides APIs for institutions and AI Agents, covering real-time and historical on-chain data such as yield, risk, lending rates, trading activity, liquidity positions, and market sentiment, helping users allocate capital on-chain.The company plans to expand its existing APIs into a verifiable blockchain data oracle network, serving institutional financial clients, AI Agent builders, and protocols that need reliable data to control the flow of funds. Unlike traditional oracles that mainly provide price data, Cambrian aims to aggregate lending protocol data, DEX liquidity, social sentiment, developer activity, and historical market data.According to Cambrian, its platform has processed millions of API calls, currently indexing approximately $4.5 billion TVL across four major lending protocols, tracking 1,789 vaults under 895 curators, and monitoring over 320,000 DEX liquidity pools on Base and Solana. The company also plans to expand trading data support, adding Hyperliquid and richer perpetual contract data.