Weekly Financing Update | 11 projects received funding, with a disclosed total financing amount of approximately $85 million (5.12-5.18)

Original | Odaily Daily Report (@OdailyChina)

Author | Dingdang (@XiaMiPP)

According to incomplete statistics from Odaily, during the period from May 12 to May 18, there were a total of 11 blockchain-related financing events announced globally, an increase from 8 in the previous week, indicating a continued active trend in the blockchain sector. However, the total amount of financing announced this week was approximately 89 million USD, a decrease compared to 113 million USD in the previous week, showing fluctuations and contractions in short-term financing scale.

In this week's financing highlights, the AI video generation platform Hedra stood out, successfully raising 32 million USD, becoming the project with the highest funding amount of the week. Following closely is the blockchain infrastructure platform Openverse Network, which secured 11 million USD in funding.

The following are specific financing events (Note: 1. Sorted by the amount disclosed; 2. Excludes fundraising and merger events; 3. * Represents some "traditional" industry companies involved in blockchain):

AI video generation platform Hedra completes $32 million Series A funding, led by a16z Infra.

On May 15, AI video generation platform Hedra announced the closing of a $32 million Series A funding round led by a16z Infra with participation from a16z Speedrun, Index Ventures, and Abstract, the latest round of funding will be mainly used to support team expansion and product development. Hedra plans to triple its headcount from the current 20 by the end of the year. The company also plans to enhance its Character-3 base model, invest in infrastructure to scale video rendering, and build enterprise-centric workflows for faster, higher-quality video production.

Openverse Network completed a $11 million strategic funding round, with participation from Castrum Capital and others.

On May 12, the Layer 0 blockchain infrastructure platform Openverse Network announced the completion of a $11 million strategic round of financing, with participation from Castrum Capital, TB Ventures, DuckDAO, Asva Capital, and others. The new funding is intended to accelerate its global ecosystem development, including ecosystem construction, encouraging more developers and partners to join in building a more open and interconnected value network.

Perpl completed a $9.25 million financing round, led by Dragonfly.

On May 13, the Perps DEX project Perpl announced the completion of a $9.25 million financing round, led by Dragonfly, with participation from Ergonia, Brevan Howard, Breed, L1 D, and CMS. Perpl plans to utilize Monad's high-performance EVM architecture to build a Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) on its chain. The team is based in London and aims to launch a testnet and plans to start the mainnet after the Monad mainnet goes live.

KYD Labs completes $7 million seed round financing, led by a16z Crypto.

On May 14, blockchain ticketing platform KYD Labs announced the completion of a $7 million seed round financing, led by a16z Crypto. KYD Labs aims to enable artists and venues to control ticket sales, fan data, and revenue, addressing the issue of revenue loss. The platform is built on Solana, allowing fans to quickly purchase tickets and plans to expand to over 100 venues in the United States by 2026.

The on-chain liquidity distribution protocol Turtle Club has completed a $6.2 million seed round financing.

On May 12, the on-chain liquidity distribution protocol Turtle Club announced the completion of a $6.2 million seed round of financing, led by THEIA, with participation from Susquehanna, Consensys, and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, among others.

The Solana ecosystem ticketing platform XP has completed a $6.2 million financing round, led by Blockchange.

On May 16, the Solana ecosystem ticketing platform XP completed a $6.2 million seed round financing, led by Blockchange, with participation from L1 D and Reflexive.

According to reports, XP is a ticketing platform based on Solana, primarily engaged in discounted ticket sales, but it implies greater ambitions in fan experience in the future.

Blockchain cloud computing company Nirvana Labs has completed a $6 million seed extension round of financing, led by Jump Crypto and others.

On May 13, blockchain cloud computing company Nirvana Labs completed a $6 million seed extension round of financing, co-led by Jump Crypto and Crucible Capital, with participation from RW 3 Ventures, Castle Island, and Hash 3 VC, bringing its total funding amount to $11.8 million.

The company provides computing services tailored specifically for the cryptocurrency sector. Unlike traditional cloud service providers that concentrate computing resources, Nirvana uses bare metal infrastructure, with each server serving only one client. Nirvana has served infrastructure providers such as BitGo and Fireblocks, as well as protocol foundations like Avalanche and Berachain. Nirvana also plans to act as a front-end service to help organizations deploy on the internet-filtering startup DoubleZero.

The AI platform Giza, based on the Web3 protocol, announced that it has completed a total financing of 5.2 million USD.

On May 16, the artificial intelligence (AI) platform Giza, based on smart contracts and web3 protocols, announced that it has completed a total financing of 5.2 million dollars as the infrastructure for Xenocognitive Finance, with investors including Base Ecosystem Fund, Echo, CoinFund, Re 7 Capital, Stake Capital, ID Theory, CONTANGO, and others.

According to reports, Giza is developing a trustless protocol aimed at decentralizing machine learning inference computation, providing guarantees for the open economy of open-source AI. It enables AI developers to generate zero-knowledge proofs, ensuring transparency and credibility in the deployment of verifiable machine learning models.

XSY.fi launched its core product Unity and completed a $5 million Pre-A round of financing to advance DeFi infrastructure construction.

On May 16, the decentralized finance capital management platform XSY.fi announced that its core product Unity (UTY) has officially launched its test version on the Avalanche blockchain and has completed a $5 million Pre-A round of financing. This round of financing was co-led by Protagonist Ventures and Borderless Capital, with participation from Paper Ventures, Chainview Capital, Blizzard the Avalanche Fund, Sonic Boom Ventures, and others.

Unity is a new type of digital synthetic USD asset designed to enhance on-chain liquidity and capital efficiency by combining spot longs and perpetual contract shorts to construct a Delta neutral strategy, allowing users to maintain exposure to the original asset while generating sustainable returns. During the testing phase, Unity has secured over 20 million USD in asset commitments and will simultaneously launch a limited-time points incentive program to encourage early participation.

Blockchain investment company Coinsilium raises £1.25 million to launch Bitcoin financial strategy.

On May 16, blockchain investment company Coinsilium Group announced the completion of £1.25 million institutional financing and simultaneously launched a £250,000 retail fundraising plan to advance its Bitcoin reserve strategy. The directed issuance is priced at 3 pence per share, with the oversubscription funds to be injected into its wholly-owned subsidiary Forza (Gibraltar) Limited as the operational entity. The company's executive chairman, Malcolm Palle, stated that this financing will accelerate the implementation of the Bitcoin reserve plan. Oak Securities has also been appointed as the co-broker to enhance capital market operations. The newly issued shares are expected to be listed on the Aquis Growth Market on May 22, bringing the total share capital to 274.7 million shares upon completion. Board member James Van Straten emphasized that the company is fully focused on the Bitcoin reserve strategy, and this fundraising includes arrangements to use 6.56 million ordinary shares to settle a £196,800 service fee.

SpaceComputer has completed its Pre-seed funding round, led by Primitive.

On May 13, the SpaceComputer project announced the completion of its Pre-seed financing, led by Primitive, with participation from nascentxyz, tangent_xyz, symbolicvc, publicworksfm, Merkle Ventures, and Star-Shield, as well as several angel investors, including loi_luu, co-founder of Polygon, and Melt_Dem also participated in this round of financing. The specific amount of this financing has not yet been disclosed.