Last week, there were 20 public financing events in the crypto market, with a total financing of approximately US$1.395 billion | Investment and Financing Weekly
Reprinted from chaincatcher
04/15/2025·12DCompiled by: Luan Peng, RootData
According to incomplete statistics from RootData, from April 7 to April 13, 2025, there were 20 public investment and financing events in the blockchain and crypto industries, with a total financing of approximately US$1.395 billion.
From the perspective of track distribution, the projects that have received financing are mainly distributed in infrastructure and AI tracks. Popular projects include AI platform Plastic Labs , income stablecoin protocol Cap , cryptocurrency insurance company Meanwhile , and decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro.
Additionally, Ripple acquired crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its service to institutional investors.
(The list of projects that raised more than $5 million last week, data source: Rootdata )
1. Infrastructure
AI platform Plastic Labs completed a US$5.35 million Pre-Seed financing, led by Variant and others
AI platform Plastic Labs announced the completion of a $5.35 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Variant, White Star Capital and Betaworks, with Mozilla Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Greycroft and Differential Ventures, and angel investors include Scott Moore, NiMA Asghari and Thomas Howell.
Meanwhile, its personalized AI identity platform "Honcho" is now open for early access.
According to official news, Layer2 solution OpenZK Network announced that it has completed a $6 million early financing, with investors including Animoca Brands, Coinstore, Sovereign Trust and other institutions. This round of financing will be used to support its technological research and development and ecological construction.
It is reported that OpenZK was founded by Dave Sandor, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific. It is currently actively negotiating cooperation with several institutions to promote subsequent strategic layout.
According to Web3 asset data platform RootData, [OpenZK Network](https://www.rootdata.com/zh/Projects/detail/OpenZK?k=MTY0MzQ= "Layer2 Solution") is a layer 2 solution based on zk-rollup technology, which can significantly reduce transaction costs and increase throughput, and also introduces a sustainable reward mechanism through native ETH staking, re-staking and stablecoin staking.
According to the official news from Towns Protocol, the decentralized communications protocol Towns announced that it had completed a US$10 million Series B financing. This round was led by a16z crypto, Coinbase Ventures has newly joined the investment, and Benchmark continues to participate. Towns is committed to building on-chain communication infrastructure and promoting the development of Web3 social and collaboration tools. The project party said that "the future of communication will go up the chain."
Web3 AI project DecentralGPT announced that it has recently completed an angel round and a round A strategic financing of US$3 million in equivalent assets. This round of financing was led by AGICrypto Capital, with Cherry Ventures, BTR Capital, DePINX, Aethir and others participating.
As a fully decentralized large language model (LLM) infrastructure, DecentralGPT revolutionized the decentralization of several top open source models including DeepSeek R1 and Llama4.0 through an innovative distributed AI inference network. The project's core architecture breaks the traditional AI monopoly pattern, truly implements the next generation AGI development concept of "security and verifiable, data privacy, governance democratization, and code full open source", and creates an intelligent interactive ecosystem for global developers and users without trust risks.
2. AI
Magic Eden acquires decentralized trading platform Slingshot
NFT platform Magic Eden has completed the acquisition of decentralized trading platform Slingshot.
Magic Eden said that the move will promote its vision of building a cross-chain asset trading platform, realizing a trading experience that supports 8M+ tokens, covers all chains (including upcoming Bitcoin) without cross-bridges or centralized exchanges.
According to CoinDesk, the income stablecoin protocol Cap completed a $11 million financing, with Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital participating.
Cap leverages a group of operators with professional skills in revenue generation to enable Volkswagen to obtain previously untapped benefits.
3. Game
Link game developer Gunzilla Games received a strategic investment of 1kx
According to official news, Crypto Venture Capital 1kx announced a strategic investment in Gunzilla Games, a chain game developer of the dystopian cyberpunk shooter game "Off The Grid", and the specific amount has not been disclosed yet.
It is reported that 1kx has been skeptical about deploying cryptocurrency strategies in AAA games due to the risk of early product execution. This investment is suspected to have made transformation and adjustments to previous investment strategies.
4. Others
According to official information, Web3 decentralized financial education platform BugsCoin (BGSC), announced the completion of a US$12 million Series A strategic financing. The round of financing was jointly invested by Becker Ventures, Castrum Capital, BullPerks, DuckDAO, Maxx Capital and several Asian family offices.
BugsCoin aims to build a practice-driven financial education ecosystem through a risk-free simulation trading system to achieve dual incentives for learning and profits. The official said that financing will be used for global market expansion, upgrade of BugsFunded decentralized asset management agreements, research and development of AI smart investment consultants, and BGSC ecological construction.
At present, BugsCoin has launched trading platforms such as Gate.io, Bitget, HashKey, MEXC, and BitMart, and has recently completed the destruction of 50 billion BGSC tokens.
Cryptocurrency insurer Meanwhi completed a $40 million Series A round led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures on Thursday, with Wences Casares, founder of cryptocurrency bank Xapo, also involved, according to Fortune Magazine.
This round of financing valued Meanwhile at $190 million, almost double the valuation of the latest round of financing in 2022. Meanwhile will use the funds raised from this round to expand globally and ensure its products meet regulatory requirements.
According to reports, Meanwhile's life insurance policy is similar to general life insurance. The insured must pay the monthly premium calculated by the actuary. However, unlike paying from a bank account or using a check, customers need to pay in Bitcoin from a cryptocurrency wallet. When the insured dies, his family will receive the claim amount in Bitcoin.
According to Forbes, AI cybersecurity startup Octane announced a $6.75 million seed round led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital (the family office of Gemini founder Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss). Other supporters include crypto exchange Gemini Frontier Fund, Circle, Duke Capital Partners and a group of strategic angel investors, including Balaji Srinivasan, former Coinbase CTO. The funding will be used for product development, expanding engineering teams and expanding Octane’s influence.
According to reports, Octane's core proposition is to supplement the passive audit model with always-on AI defense. Octane is currently focusing on smart contract vulnerabilities, but the company's goal in the future is to detect and prevent more complex attacks.
According to PR Newswire, decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro announced today that it has received additional investment from Ayre Ventures. Since obtaining initial seed funding in October 2024, Ayre Ventures' total investment in Libraro has reached 1 million pounds (about 1.28 million US dollars).
According to reports, the Libraro platform uses blockchain technology to protect author identity, prevent copyright infringement, and improve the transparency of ownership and distribution rights. The platform deepens the connection between readers, authors and publishers through the Web3 loyalty program.
Crypto catering app Blackbird completes $50 million Series B financing, led by Spark Capital
According to Fortune, crypto catering app Blackbird completed a $50 million Series B round with Spark Capital leading the round, with Coinbase, a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures and Amex Ventures participating, and founder Ben Leventhal said he raised the fund in the fourth quarter of 2024, but it was not disclosed until recently, while he declined to disclose the implicit valuation of the round.
Blackbird has raised a total of $85 million since 2022.
Ripple acquires crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion
Ripple acquires crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its service to institutional investors.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the acquisition represents the efforts of Ripple, the company behind XRP, to integrate a wider range of services to attract large organizations, “Ripple needs to make sure we have the right infrastructure to attract and expand to a larger community of organizations.”
According to The Block, Sats Terminal, the Bitcoin decentralized aggregation protocol, completed a $1.7 million Pre-Seed round of financing, led by Coinbase Ventures and Draper Associates, and Draper Dragon, BitcoinFi Accelerator, UTXO Management, Core Chain Ventures, Sats Ventures, Delta Blockchain Fund, Tenzor Capital and 3Commas Capital participated.
Sats Terminal was founded by Stanislav Havryliuk and Rishabh Java, with its original intention to make Bitcoin native DeFi products more intuitive and interconnected.
