funding

The Circle Foundation announced two grants to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Food Programme (WFP) to explore the application of digital payments and digital financial infrastructure in humanitarian aid and development projects.The Circle Foundation stated that the relevant programs will study how to utilize digital payments and regulated payment-type stablecoins to disburse funds to aid recipients more quickly, transparently, and at a lower cost.For the UNDP, the grant will be used to establish and operate a "Digital Asset Innovation Pool," helping country offices expand previous digital payment pilot projects conducted in Syria, Haiti, Guatemala, and Gambia from single projects to regular project execution, and provide support such as regulation, operations, and beneficiary protection; this mechanism will not replace traditional banking channels but will serve as a complementary option outside the existing payment system.For the WFP, the grant will support the establishment of governance, risk management, funding, reconciliation systems, and compliance tools necessary for stablecoin payments, and integrate local fintech and mobile payment services. Over the next three years, the WFP plans to test 2 to 3 payment channels connecting its payment system with local financial service providers and markets to assess the performance of stablecoin payments in terms of efficiency, transparency, and resilience.

Market prediction protocol functionSPACE announced the completion of a $1.7 million Pre-Seed round of financing, aimed at building economic primitives for pricing numerical outcomes. This round of financing was led by Maven 11 Capital and Blockwall, with participation from Smape Capital.

According to a report by The Information cited by Dongcha, two individuals with direct knowledge stated that the artificial intelligence company DeepSeek has an annual revenue of approximately $1 billion, up from less than $500 million a few months ago. The revenue primarily comes from model APIs, and the free chat application currently has no advertising or subscription revenue.The report indicated that part of the revenue growth is due to price increases, with some API prices raised by about 2.3 to 4.5 times. Liang Wenfeng recently told investors that the number of customers did not decline after the price increase, and demand remains strong. Previously disclosed financial data showed that the gross margin for the API business in the first seven months of this year was 82.9%.DeepSeek's second round of financing plans to raise approximately 50 billion yuan, with a valuation of about 500 billion. The company hopes to complete this by the end of October and is also preparing for an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Sci-Tech Innovation Board. Liang Wenfeng stated that over 70% of the computing power is used for training new models, leaving less than 30% for inference; the company is trying to run more small models directly on gaming graphics cards, reserving high-end chips for training.

According to Bloomberg, a data center developer supported by an affiliate of Blue Owl Capital announced a bond issuance to raise $1.1 billion to bet on AI computing power, funding the Digital Drive data center project near Richmond, Virginia.The data center has an IT capacity of 76 megawatts and will be fully leased by CoreWeave under a 15-year, $2.94 billion contract, expected to be operational from 2027 to 2028.

According to Techcrunch, AI agent startup Ema has completed a $77 million Series B funding round, led by Creaegis, with existing investors Accel, Section 32, and Prosus participating in the round. To date, the company's total funding has reached $140 million, with a valuation that has more than doubled since the last funding round in 2024.Ema was founded in 2023 by former Google and Coinbase executive Surojit Chatterjee and former Okta executive Souvik Sen. The company deploys technology called "AI Employee," which is a system capable of coordinating multiple AI agents to help businesses execute multi-step business processes within existing applications, rather than handling one task at a time.It is reported that most of the new funds will be used to expand market operations, as the company had previously focused primarily on product development.

Market news reports that Firmus, supported by Nvidia, is seeking $10 billion in financing to develop artificial intelligence chips.

The web data infrastructure company Firecrawl announced on platform X that it has completed a $75 million Series B financing round, led by Smash Capital, and launched a knowledge base for AI agents called Alexandria, aimed at providing agents with unified access to real-time web, official data providers, and professional indexes.According to the official page, Alexandria currently integrates 82 data providers, 471 data capabilities, and over 113 million papers, READMEs, Issues, and technical documents, covering 28 categories including finance, government, code, shopping, and real estate, and supports access via MCP, CLI, and API. Firecrawl claims that its internal testing shows that Alexandria's answer quality on approximately 1,000 directory-type questions is 21% higher than that of built-in web tools.

Global payment and financial infrastructure Infini announced the completion of a $6 million seed round financing, with participation from SNZ, Reforge, Enlight Capital, NDV (NextGen Digital Venture), FORTWEST, Vernal, and others.Infini stated that the funds will be used to further strengthen its global payment and financial infrastructure, making it easier and more efficient for individuals and businesses to manage and use funds globally.

On-chain gold and foreign exchange trading infrastructure XStable has recently completed a new round of financing, which was supported by several institutions including YZi Labs, Sui Foundation, Taisu Ventures, and CatcherVC.Previously, XStable had received investments and support from institutions such as Solana, Amber Group, KuCoin Ventures, and Singchain, accumulating millions of dollars in financing from more than ten institutional investors worldwide. Currently, XStable has focused on market development around gold, silver, and major foreign exchange trading pairs. According to data disclosed by the platform, XStable's average daily trading volume has exceeded 100 million dollars, with a cumulative trading volume of over several hundred billion dollars.

According to exclusive reports from "Investment World", Yan Wentao officially joined DeepSeek on Monday and reported to the company, taking on the role of the company's first CFO.Yan Wentao was born in 1991 and graduated from Fudan University. He joined Hillhouse Capital in 2020 and has previously participated in projects such as MiniMax, Zhipu AI, and ByteDance.DeepSeek is finalizing its second round of financing, planning to raise 50 billion yuan, with a pre-investment valuation of 500 billion yuan, and has already hired CITIC Securities to prepare for a potential Sci-Tech Innovation Board IPO.

The collectibles trading platform CatchBack announced the completion of an $8 million seed round financing, led by Foundation Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Robinhood Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Solana Foundation.CatchBack stated that it will use the funds to build products related to collectibles trading.

Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas stated that Bitcoin ETFs have advantages over gold ETFs, including the fact that the Bitcoin investor demographic is younger; as the market matures, volatility decreases, and correlation with other assets stabilizes, Bitcoin will attract more large institutional adoption.In addition, Bitcoin ETFs have stronger market enthusiasm and sales resources, with dozens of wholesalers familiar with both the crypto market and traditional investors currently promoting and educating the market, while gold ETFs lack similar promotional strength.

According to The Wall Street Journal, AI computing infrastructure startup Crusoe has completed a $3.9 billion Series F funding round, with a post-money valuation of approximately $30.9 billion. This round of financing was co-led by Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, and Mubadala Investment, with participation from Founders Fund, TPG, and the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA).Founded in 2018, Crusoe initially provided services for cryptocurrency miners and later shifted to AI computing infrastructure. It spent two years building a large AI data center in Abilene, Texas, to provide computing power for OpenAI and Microsoft. The company is currently transitioning to producing compact data centers named "Spark," loading prefabricated facilities onto trucks and deploying them to locations with excess power to more quickly meet the demand for AI inference computing power.

The UK AI startup Emulate, founded by former DeepMind researchers, was established just one month ago and is valued at nearly $4 billion.The company is in deep negotiations with potential investors, planning to raise up to $700 million, which would bring its valuation to $3.7 billion upon completion of the financing. This round of financing is co-led by Index Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

According to Bloomberg, the AI startup Manus founded in China plans to complete approximately $500 million in financing, with its valuation expected to double to $4 billion. This is the company's first round of financing since Beijing requested it to split from Meta Platforms, and the related transaction is expected to be completed soon.Insiders say that negotiations are still ongoing, and the terms of the deal may change. After this round of financing is completed, Manus, a pioneer in the field of agent AI, will become the highest-valued startup in this sector in China. Existing investors include Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund. Representatives from Manus, Tencent, HSG, and ZhenFund declined to comment.

The enterprise-level self-improvement software development company Factory announced the completion of a $200 million financing round, with a valuation reaching $5 billion; the company's total financing has exceeded $400 million, more than doubling its valuation from $1.5 billion in April this year.This round of funding will be used to accelerate research and development, product expansion, and global market development. Factory stated that institutions such as Blackstone, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Insight Partners, Evantic Capital, Sound Ventures, New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Mantis VC, and Clearlake, as well as individuals like Nico Rosberg, Brad Gerstner, and Marc Benioff, support its development. Factory claims that hundreds of thousands of developers are using its products, including teams from NVIDIA, Blackstone, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Palo Alto Networks, and Adobe.

The credit default swaps of SoftBank Group are hovering near a three-year high, as traders assess the potential impact on OpenAI's financing plans. SoftBank has committed to investing $64.6 billion in OpenAI.OpenAI is in early negotiations with investors, planning a new round of financing before its initial public offering, with a valuation exceeding $1.2 trillion.

Shanghai Guotou Xian Dao recently led a new round of financing for Hello Robotaxi with approximately 100 million USD, with Min Jin Investment and Genesis Partners Venture Capital participating.After this round of financing, the valuation of Hello Robotaxi's business is close to 3 billion USD.

According to The Information, AI agent startup Instinct is reportedly in talks to raise $1 billion, with a valuation potentially reaching $10 billion.