Financing Weekly Report | 14 public financing events; Movement Labs is close to completing US$100 million in Series B financing, with an estimated valuation of US$3 billion
Reprinted from panewslab
01/13/2025·1MHighlights of this issue
According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 14 investment and financing events in the global blockchain last week (1.6-1.12), with the total scale of funds exceeding US$167 million, a significant increase compared with the previous week. The overview is as follows:
- Three investment and financing events were announced in DeFi , among which Ooga Booga, the Berachain ecological liquidity aggregator, announced the completion of a US$1.5 million strategic round of financing;
- The Web3 game track announced an investment and financing event. ZKsync-driven game-specific Layer 2 blockchain ZKcandy successfully completed US$4 million in private placement financing;
- Four investment and financing events were announced in the AI+Web3 field, among which AI payment infrastructure Nevermined announced the completion of a US$4 million seed round of financing, led by Generative Ventures;
- The DePIN circuit announced two investment and financing events. The decentralized GPU network Inferix announced that it received a US$2.6 million investment from DePIN X Capital;
- Two investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure & tools field. Movement Labs is close to completing a US$100 million Series B financing, with an estimated valuation of US$3 billion;
- One investment and financing event was announced in other categories, among which SoSoValue, an AI-driven encrypted data platform, announced the completion of US$15 million in Series A financing, with a valuation of US$200 million;
- Centralized finance announced an investment and financing incident. FTX EU, the bankrupt European branch of FTX, has been acquired by Backpack Exchange for US$32.7 million.
DeFi
Ooga Booga completes strategic round of financing of US$1.5 million, led by Primal
Berachain ecosystem liquidity aggregator Ooga Booga announced the completion of a strategic round of financing of US$1.5 million, which will be used to accelerate its next phase of development in the Berachain ecosystem. This round of financing was led by Primal, with participating institutions including CitizenX, Quantstamp, Rubik, ViaBTC Capital, TempleDAO, etc. In addition, many angel investors participated, including individual investors from Infinex, GMX, Saison Capital, Movement Labs, etc.
Ocean Protocol invests US$735,000 to support Yiedl.ai in developing AI-driven DeFi
OceanDAO, co-founders Trent McConaghy and Bruce Pon, and Ocean Predictoor team members jointly invested $735,000 in Yiedl.ai, an AI-centric DeFi marketplace platform dedicated to driving DeFi innovation through data-intensive AI.
SUI ecological project Wave completed seed round financing, led by KuCoin Labs
The SUI ecological project Wave officially announced that its seed round of financing completed in November 2024 was led by KuCoin Labs, and other investors include the SUI Foundation, Web3Port Foundation and Comma3 Ventures. The amount of financing was not disclosed. The Wave team said it currently has more than 4 million on-chain users, with more than 600,000 monthly active users. Its products include Wave Trading, a trading tool based on Telegram, Wave Pad, an incubation platform that supports high-quality early projects in the SUI ecosystem, and DeFi and GameFi related products, such as Wave Staking and Lucky Wheel, providing users with a comprehensive platform for trading, airdrops, investments, and games. A one-stop experience.
Web3 games
ZKsync-driven game-specific L2 blockchain ZKcandy completes US$4 million in private financing
ZKsync-driven game-specific Layer 2 blockchain ZKcandy successfully completed $4 million in private financing. Investors in this round include Wemix Network, Animoca Ventures, Spartan Group, Perlone Capital, Presto Labs, Flowdesk, Lecca Ventures, Efficient Frontier and Prometheuz. ZKcandy is developed and operated by iCandy, and its subsidiary Lemon Sky Studios has participated in the development of a number of AAA games, such as "Nioh: The Rise of Ronin", "The Last of Us 2: Remastered", "Spider-Man 2" and "Baldur's Gate 3" ” and “Final Fantasy XVI”. ZKcandy currently has more than 2.4 million testnet wallets and is preparing 25 games including first-class Hollywood IPs, which are planned to be launched on the mainnet in the first half of 2025. This project aims to promote the development of Web3 games through Layer 2 technology and build a future decentralized game ecosystem.
AI
AI payment infrastructure Nevermined completes US$4 million in seed round financing
AI payment infrastructure Nevermined announced the completion of a US$4 million seed round of financing, led by Generative Ventures, with participation from Polymorphic Capital, Halo Capital and Arca. According to reports, Nevermined is building a decentralized financial infrastructure for commerce between artificial intelligences. The protocol it builds turns artificial intelligence interactions into permissionless economic transactions, just like PayPal turns every web page into a storefront. It aims to make each AI agent a sovereign economic actor that can set prices for its services.
Verifiable AI technology company Rena Labs completed a $3.3 million pre-seed round of financing, led by Paper Ventures, with participation from several investment institutions including Lightspeed Faction, Eterna Capital, Lyrik Ventures, Mapleblock Capital, Selini Capital and Keyrock. Rena Labs plans to use this financing to expand its team, attract developers and industry experts, and strengthen the research and development of its abstract middleware Trusted Execution Environment (TEE). This technology aims to build an infrastructure for trusted AI applications on the chain, enabling intelligent systems to achieve trust and verifiability by default while ensuring user digital sovereignty.
AI-driven RWA L2 network Novastro completes US$1.2 million in seed round financing
Novastro, the AI-driven RWA Layer2 network, announced the completion of a US$1.2 million seed round of financing, led by Woodstock, with participation from Faculty group, Double peak group, Cogitent, X21 and Sam Tapaliya. According to reports, Novastro is an artificial intelligence-driven real-world asset (RWA) Layer 2 chain that integrates MoveVM and EigenLayer AVS. The network is designed to provide Ethereum-level security while leveraging the efficient scalability of the Move language. Support tokenized revenue applications in RWA and DeFi fields. Its core framework is built around the RUSD stablecoin, which is designed for the tokenization and trading of real-world assets.
Confidential AI project Privasea completed Series A financing at a valuation of US$180 million, with a total of US$15 million raised in three rounds. Investors include GSR, Amber and Echo. Early investment institutions include Binance Labs, OKX Ventures, Nomura's Laser Digital and Gate Labs. . Privasea has released the DeepSea test network Beta on January 6. This financing will be used to accelerate the deployment of the main network DeepSea and the research and development of related intelligent agents, and promote the development of human-computer interaction and intelligent agent interaction and other fields.
DePIN
DePIN startup Starpower completes US$2.5 million in financing, led by Framework Ventures
DePIN startup Starpower announced the completion of a new round of financing of US$2.5 million, bringing its total funding to US$4 million. The new financing was led by Framework Ventures, with participation from Solana Ventures and Bitscale Capital. According to reports, Starpower is creating a decentralized energy network, including batteries and electric vehicles, to help meet power needs. Its protocol has amassed 1.5 million registered wallets and over 16,000 activated devices, in addition to generating $1 million in revenue. The company intends to use the funds to continue building its decentralized platform and increase its efforts to increase user adoption.
DePIN network Hivera announces completion of $2 million in financing
DePIN Network Hivera recently announced on the X platform that it has received US$2 million in funding from the IPN Foundation. According to reports, Hivera is a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) supported by Ton Incubator. It allows users to contribute data for AI training through Telegram applet and receive token rewards based on device bandwidth speed.
Infrastructure & Tools
Movement Labs, which focuses on the development of the Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain, is close to completing a US$100 million Series B financing with an estimated valuation of US$3 billion. This round of financing is jointly led by CoinFund and Nova Fund (the digital asset arm of Brevan Howard). Investors will receive shares in the company and its token Move, focusing on the form of tokens. Movement Labs previously completed a $38 million Series A round of financing in April 2024 , led by Polychain Capital. Completion of this round of financing is expected to be achieved by the end of January.
Movement is based on the Move programming language developed by Facebook, which is different from independent public chains Aptos and Sui. It adopts a Layer 2 structure and fully utilizes the Ethereum ecosystem. Its mainnet beta version and Move token were launched in December 2024. Move's current market value is approximately US$2.25 billion, which has nearly doubled since its launch.
Sundial, the developer of identity protocol Onflow, announced the completion of a strategic Pre-Seed round of financing led by Figment Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Avalanche, etc. This round of funding will allow it to continue development of its privacy-respecting identity protocol Onflow. According to reports, Sundial aims to build applications and infrastructure for the entire stack, and it launched its ZK ID solution Onflow in November last year.
other
Crypto data platform SoSoValue completes $15 million in financing to launch multi-currency index
SoSoValue, an AI-driven encrypted data platform, announced the completion of a $15 million Series A round of financing, with a valuation of $200 million. This round of financing was led by Hongshan (Sequoia China), SmallSpark, Mirana Ventures and Safepal. SoSoValue stated that this round of financing was completed at the end of December, and the funds were mainly used for the reserve fund of SoSoValue Indices (SSI). SSI is an innovative spot crypto index protocol designed to promote efficient investment in the crypto market and makes SoSoValue the first institution to introduce spot index to the market in the form of tokens.
SoSoValue is committed to providing real-time market data and ETF capital flow tracking for retail investors. The SoSoValue Indices Protocol it launched packages digital assets into cross-chain cryptocurrencies through smart contracts. SoSoValue has launched four indices at the end of December, namely: MAG7 .ssi, MEME.ssi (tracks the top ten memecoins), DEFI.ssi and USSI (hedged).
Centralized Finance
FTX EU, the bankrupt European arm of FTX, has been acquired by Backpack Exchange for $32.7 million. FTX EU previously held a MiFID II license issued by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC). Backpack Exchange CEO Armani Ferrante said that the company plans to become the only regulated perpetual contract provider in Europe and has submitted a MiCA notification and is expected to go online in the first quarter of 2025. In addition, Backpack plans to launch a full set of crypto derivatives services, prioritize the launch of regulated perpetual futures products, and promises to give priority to returning FTX EU customer funds.
Currently, many exchanges, including Coinbase and Bitstamp, have obtained MiFID II licenses. It is reported that the Backpack founding team has previously participated in the construction of the Solana ecosystem and successfully launched wallet and NFT businesses. Last year, it completed US$17 million in financing.
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