A total of 20 public fundraising events took place in the crypto market last week, raising a total of about $1.395 billion| Investment and Financing Weekly
Finishing: Luan Peng, RootData
According to incomplete statistics from RootData, from April 7 to April 13, 2025, a total of 20 public investment and financing events occurred in the blockchain and crypto industries, with a cumulative financing of about $1.395 billion.
From the perspective of track distribution, the projects that have received financing are mainly distributed in the infrastructure and AI tracks. Popular projects include AI platform Plastic Labs , yield-generating stablecoin protocol Cap, crypto insurance company Meanwhile, and decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro.
In addition, Ripple acquired crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its services to institutional investors.
(List of projects that raised more than $5 million last week, data source: Rootdata).
1. Infrastructure
AI platform Plastic Labs closed a $5.35 million Pre-Seed funding round led by Variant and others
AI platform Plastic Labs announced the closing of a $5.35 million Pre-Seed round led by Variant, White Star Capital, and Betaworks, with participation from Mozilla Ventures, Seed Club Ventures, Greycroft, and Differential Ventures, among others, and angel investors including Scott Moore and NiMA Asghari with Thomas Howell.
Meanwhile, its personalized AI identity platform, Honcho, is now open for early access.
OpenZK Network, a Layer 2 solution, closed a $6 million early-stage funding round with participation from Animoca Brands and others
According to official information, OpenZK Network, a Layer2 solution, announced the completion of a $6 million early funding round from investors including Animoca Brands, Coinstore, Sovereign Trust and others. This round of financing will be used to support its technology research and development and ecological construction.
It is reported that OpenZK was founded by Dave Sdor, former CEO of Goldman Sachs Asia Pacific, and is currently actively negotiating cooperation with a number of institutions to promote the follow-up strategic layout.
According to Web3 asset data platform RootData, OpenZK Network is a Layer 2 solution based on zk-rollup technology that significantly reduces transaction costs and increases throughput, while also introducing a sustainable reward mechanism through native ETH staking, restaking, and stablecoin staking.
Social messaging protocol Towns closed a $10 million Series B funding round led by a16z crypto
According to Towns Protocol's official news, decentralized communication protocol Towns announced the completion of a $10 million Series B funding round, led by a16z crypto, with Coinbase Ventures adding new investment and Benchmark continuing to participate. Towns is committed to building on-chain communication infrastructure that drives the development of Web3 social and collaboration tools. The project team said that "the future of communication will go on-chain".
DecentralGPT, a Web3 AI project, has closed an angel and Series A strategic funding round of $3 million in equivalent assets, led by AGICrypto Capital
DecentralGPT, a Web3 AI project, announced that it has recently completed an angel round and Series A strategic financing of $3 million in equivalent assets. The round was led by AGICrypto Capital, with participation from Cherry Ventures, BTR Capital, DePINX, Aethir, and others.
As a fully decentralized large language model (LLM) infrastructure, DecentralGPT has revolutionized the decentralized deployment of multiple top open-source large models, including DeepSeek R1 and Llama4.0, through an innovative distributed AI inference network. The core architecture of the project breaks the traditional AI monopoly pattern, and truly implements the next-generation AGI development concept of "security and verifiability, data privacy, democratization of governance, and full open source code", creating an intelligent interaction ecosystem without trust risk for developers and users around the world.
2. AI
Magic Eden acquires decentralized trading platform Slingshot
NFT platform Magic Eden has completed its acquisition of decentralized trading platform Slingshot.
Magic Eden said that this move will advance its vision of building a cross-chain asset trading platform, enabling a trading experience that supports 8M+ tokens, covers all chains (including the upcoming Bitcoin launch) and does not require cross-bridges or centralized exchanges.
Cap, a yield-based stablecoin protocol, closed an $11 million funding round with participation from Triton Capital and others
According to CoinDesk, yield-based stablecoin protocol Cap closed an $11 million funding round with participation from Franklin Templeton and Triton Capital, among others.
CAP leverages a pool of operators with revenue generation expertise to enable the masses to reap previously untapped revenues.
3. Games
Blockchain game developer Gunzilla Games has received a strategic investment of 1kx
According to official information, crypto venture capital 1kx announced a strategic investment in Gunzilla Games, the chain game developer of the dystopian cyberpunk shooter "Off The Grid", the specific amount has not been disclosed.
It is reported that 1kx has been skeptical about deploying cryptocurrency strategies in AAA games due to the risks involved in early product execution, and this investment is suspected to be a transformational adjustment to the previous investment strategy.
4. Miscellaneous
BugsCoin, a decentralized finance education platform, has closed a $12 million Series A funding round with participation from Becker Ventures and others
According to official information, BugsCoin (BGSC), a Web3 decentralized finance education platform, announced the completion of a $12 million Series A strategic funding round. The round was co-invested by Becker Ventures, Castrum Capital, BullPerks, DuckDAO, Maxx Capital and a number of Asian family offices.
BugsCoin aims to build a practice-driven financial education ecosystem through a risk-free simulated trading system, and realize the dual incentive of learning and benefit. According to the official, the financing will be used for global market expansion, BugsFunded decentralized asset management protocol upgrade, AI robo-advisory research and development, and BGSC ecological construction.
At present, BugsCoin has been listed on Gate.io, Bitget, HashKey, MEXC, BitMart and other trading platforms, and recently completed the token burning of 50 billion BGSC.
Meanwhile, a crypto insurer, closed a $40 million Series A funding round led by Framework Ventures and others
Meanwhile, a crypto insurer, closed a $40 million Series A funding round led by Framework Ventures and Fulgur Ventures on Thursday, with Wences Casares, founder of crypto bank Xapo, also participating, according to Fortune magazine.
The round valued Meanwhile at $190 million, nearly double its valuation in its most recent round of funding in 2022. Meanwhile will use the funds raised in this round to expand globally and ensure that its products meet regulatory requirements.
According to reports, Meanwhile's life insurance policy is similar to that of regular life insurance. The policyholder is required to pay the monthly premium calculated by the actuary. However, unlike paying from a bank account or using a check, customers pay with Bitcoin from a cryptocurrency wallet. When the policyholder dies, the family will receive the claim amount in Bitcoin.
Octane, an AI cybersecurity company, closed a $6.75 million seed round led by Winklevoss Capital and others
According to Forbes, AI cybersecurity startup Octane has announced the closing of a $6.75 million seed round co-led by Archetype and Winklevoss Capital (the family offices of Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss). Other backers include crypto exchange Gemini Frontier Fund, Circle, Duke Capital Partners, and a group of strategic angel investors, including former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan. The funds will be used for product development, expanding the engineering team and expanding Octane's reach.
According to the introduction, Octane's core proposition is to complement the passive audit model with always-on AI defenses. Octane is currently focused on smart contract vulnerabilities, but in the future the company aims to detect and prevent more sophisticated attacks.
Libraro, a decentralized reading platform, has received additional investment from Ayre Ventures, bringing the total investment to approximately $1.28 million
Decentralized publishing and reading platform Libraro announced today that it has received additional investment from Ayre Ventures, which has invested £1 million (about $1.28 million) in Libraro since receiving initial seed funding in October 2024, PR Newswire reported.
According to reports, the Libraro platform uses blockchain technology to protect authorship, prevent copyright infringement, and increase the transparency of ownership and distribution rights. The platform deepens the connection between readers, authors, and publishers through Web3 loyalty programs.
Crypto F&B app Blackbird has closed a $50 million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital
Crypto dining app Blackbird closed a $50 million Series B funding round led by Spark Capital with participation from Coinbase, a16z crypto, Union Square Ventures, and Amex Ventures, according to Fortune, and the company's founder, Ben Leventhal, said he raised the money in the fourth quarter of 2024, but it wasn't disclosed until recently, At the same time, he declined to disclose the implied valuation of the round.
Since 2022, Blackbird has raised a total of $85 million.
Ripple acquired crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion
Ripple acquired crypto-friendly broker Hidden Road for $1.25 billion to expand its services to institutional investors.
Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse said the acquisition represents an effort by Ripple, the company behind XRP, to integrate a wider range of services to appeal to larger institutions, "Ripple needs to ensure that we have the infrastructure in place to attract and scale to larger large community groups." ”
Bitcoin decentralized aggregation protocol Sats Terminal closed a $1.7 million pre-seed round led by Coinbase Ventures and others
According to The Block, Bitcoin decentralized aggregation protocol Sats Terminal closed a $1.7 million Pre-Seed round led by Coinbase Ventures and Draper Associates, with 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 the idea of making Bitcoin's native DeFi products more intuitive and connected.