News linked to this event type.
According to CoinDesk, French crypto hardware wallet company Ledger has suspended its U.S. IPO plans due to unfavorable market conditions. Sources familiar with the matter said Ledger was previously valued at approximately $4 billion and had engaged Goldman Sachs, Jefferies, and Barclays as IPO advisors—but it has not yet filed any registration documents with the SEC. The company may instead consider private fundraising. Earlier, Kraken also paused its IPO citing market conditions, while publicly listed BitGo’s stock price has fallen roughly 36% from its offering price, indicating a broad cooling of enthusiasm among crypto firms for U.S. listings.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Anthropic—an AI startup that long trailed its competitors—is rapidly rising to become a leader in the artificial intelligence field. With its deep focus on enterprise users and programming use cases, Anthropic’s growth has continued to accelerate this year; the latest data shows its momentum is still intensifying, while OpenAI’s growth appears to be plateauing. In terms of fundraising, Anthropic’s latest round of financing values the company at over $90 billion—potentially surpassing OpenAI. Founded jointly in 2021 by siblings Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at OpenAI, Anthropic has evolved from a former industry follower into the strongest competitor.
Delphi Digital stated that Strategy has primarily relied on issuing stocks at high premiums and low-cost convertible bonds over the past years to secure funds for continuously increasing its Bitcoin holdings. However, this financing window is now essentially closed.Delphi points out that common stock financing is currently constrained by the Market-Adjusted Net Asset Value (mNAV), and new convertible bond issuance has also been suspended. STRC has thus become its primary financing channel. Since STRC has a lower repayment priority in the capital structure compared to convertible bonds and preferred shares, it requires a high yield of approximately 11.5% to compensate investors for the impairment risk they bear.Delphi believes that Strategy is currently continuing its Bitcoin accumulation plan by paying higher financing costs, buying time to address the large debt repayments maturing in 2028.
According to The Block, Matt Hougan, Chief Investment Officer at Bitwise, noted that three enterprise-grade blockchains—Arc (by Circle), Canton Network, and Tempo (by Stripe)—have collectively raised over $1 billion in funding recently. All three funding rounds occurred after the signing of the GENIUS Act in July 2025. Hougan believes this legislation broke a prior regulatory stalemate that had discouraged institutional capital from entering the space. Hougan identified three key signals: First, all three blockchains prioritize native privacy-preserving transactions as a core design feature, addressing institutions’ need for transaction confidentiality. Second, the implementation of the GENIUS Act has significantly reduced regulatory uncertainty; the next critical variable is the pending Clarity Act, from which stablecoins and tokenization infrastructure stand to benefit. Third, these blockchains are backed by top-tier institutions—including Goldman Sachs, Citadel, BlackRock, Stripe, and Visa—marking a stark contrast to Ethereum and Solana, which emerged from grassroots origins. Hougan stated that his firm’s capital remains primarily allocated to native crypto projects, and he believes these emerging enterprise chains will raise the overall competitive bar and attract additional capital inflows.
According to an official announcement, the digital asset trading platform Websea has reached an investment agreement with a strategic investor and will officially resume withdrawals at 16:00 (UTC+8) on May 18, simultaneously releasing the specific withdrawal arrangements. The strategic investment is reported to come from a Middle Eastern family fund. The two parties conducted multiple rounds of in-depth discussions on core topics including the platform’s asset status, business structure optimization, recovery roadmap design, and long-term development planning, ultimately reaching a consensus on cooperation. Currently, the investor is proceeding with fund injection per the established process, while concurrently conducting legal due diligence, signing agreements, and finalizing equity arrangements.
Cathie Wood posted on X platform, stating that ARK participated in Kalshi's latest funding round, believing that prediction markets are emerging as a new layer of financial infrastructure, enabling real-time price discovery around events, probabilities, and the evolving state of the world. Kalshi is at the forefront of this innovation, and ARK supports the team in pushing the boundaries of how information is aggregated and expressed through markets.
According to Times Brasil, Brazil’s Central Bank’s Administrative Sanctions Procedure Decision Committee has fined Banco Topázio approximately USD 3.15 million and banned it from conducting over-the-counter foreign exchange operations for virtual asset transactions for the next two years. Regulators stated that between October 2020 and September 2021, Banco Topázio processed around USD 1.7 billion in related transactions while failing to adequately verify customer eligibility, maintain proper customer records, and implement anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) controls—and further failed to report suspicious transactions to COAF. Officials from Brazil’s Central Bank indicated that similar restrictions could also be applied in the future to other institutions engaged in cryptocurrency-related activities.
According to Bloomberg, AI company Anthropic is in preliminary negotiations with investors to raise at least $30 billion in new funding, with a potential valuation exceeding $900 billion—excluding the amount raised in this round. Sources familiar with the matter said the deal could be finalized as early as the end of this month, though it has not yet been finalized and no term sheet has been signed. Anthropic is the developer of Claude; if completed, this funding round would become its largest to date.
Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan stated that privacy is becoming a core infrastructure direction for the next phase of the crypto industry. Recently, three institutional-grade blockchains focused on stablecoins and asset tokenization—Arc, Canton, and Tempo—have accumulated over $1 billion in total funding, indicating a rapidly growing demand from institutions for "privacy-friendly on-chain financial systems."Among them, stablecoin issuer Circle contributed $222 million in funding for Arc, giving it a valuation of approximately $3 billion; Digital Asset’s Canton blockchain is reportedly seeking $300 million in funding at a $2 billion valuation; and Tempo, backed by Stripe and Paradigm, has previously completed $500 million in funding at a valuation of $5 billion.Hougan noted that this funding wave reflects three major trends: the gradual clarification of the U.S. regulatory framework, increased institutional demand for on-chain privacy, and intensified competition among new blockchain networks supported by large enterprises. Current public blockchains still face structural trade-offs between speed, cost, security, and privacy. However, scenarios involving stablecoins and RWA tokenization require systems that simultaneously offer high performance, compliance, and privacy, making “verifiable privacy” a critical prerequisite for institutional adoption of on-chain finance.Hougan further stated that, for enterprises, “all transactions being publicly broadcast” is not an advantage but a potential flaw. In the future, users and institutions may find it increasingly difficult to accept a fully transparent on-chain financial environment. He believes that privacy capabilities could become the “killer app” driving the crypto industry into its next phase of mainstream adoption. Additionally, following the passage of the U.S. Genius Act in 2025, regulatory certainty has significantly increased, providing a clearer policy foundation for institutional funds to enter the crypto infrastructure space. (CoinDesk)
Odaily Odaily reports, stablecoin yield infrastructure project Osero announced the completion of a $13.5 million funding round, led by Sky Ecosystem, with co-leading from Plasma. Participating investors include RedStone, The Rollup, Kairos Research, as well as several crypto institutions and industry executives such as Joe Flanagan and Lorenzo Romagnoli. Osero was co-incubated by Stablewatch and Soter Labs, a governance and operations institution associated with the Sky Ecosystem. The project focuses on building savings and yield infrastructure around the Sky stablecoin system USDS and its yield-bearing asset sUSDS. It is reported that the funding round was initiated in December 2024 and completed in March 2026, utilizing a SAFT structure for issuance. The valuation was not disclosed. (The Block)
According to market sources, AI startup Wispr is in funding negotiations with a valuation of $2 billion.
crypto research institution Delphi Digital has released its latest report, "How Far Can Saylor Stretch It," providing a systematic analysis of Strategy's Bitcoin (BTC) capital expansion mechanism. It indicates that the company's financing structure is transitioning from a phase of "low-cost accumulation" into one of "diminishing marginal efficiency."The report shows that within the current asset accumulation system centered on Bitcoin, STRC has become the core financing tool for Strategy's continued BTC purchases. Initially, the company relied on a significant premium in MSTR's stock price (with mNAV far exceeding BTC's net asset value) to create a positive cycle where "issuing shares meant increasing holdings." However, as valuations have receded to approximately 1.24 times the base mNAV of enterprise value, the BTC-per-share accretion effect from common stock issuance is approaching a break-even point.Meanwhile, while convertible bonds have played a crucial role historically, they have accumulated a principal of approximately $8.2 billion and face concentrated repayment pressure after September 2027, putting long-term strain on the sustainability of the financing structure.STRC provides Strategy with a continuous source of financing—used to maintain its BTC buying pace—by offering yield-seeking investors an approximately 11.5% annualized monthly dividend. However, this mechanism also introduces ongoing cash flow obligations, meaning that each round of financing simultaneously builds future dividend burdens while increasing BTC assets.The report emphasizes a key risk scenario: if BTC's price remains stagnant and MSTR's premium fails to recover, the "gains from STRC-financed coin purchases" could be progressively offset by "common stock dilution and dividend obligations." Although the company's approximately $2.25 billion cash reserve can cover its roughly $1 billion redemption pressure in 2027, its larger debt and dividend structure in 2028 remains unresolved.Furthermore, STRC's current authorized issuance limit of approximately $28.3 billion serves as a critical constraint. Once this limit is reached, the capacity for new BTC purchases may slow, yet existing dividend obligations will persist—thereby altering the overall dynamic growth trajectory of BTC per share.
Odaily AI security startup Depthfirst has announced that its self-developed AI model outperforms Anthropic’s latest model, Mythos, in code vulnerability detection. It has discovered more critical security vulnerabilities at approximately one-tenth the cost, drawing attention from the cybersecurity industry.According to the company, a month before the launch of Mythos, it had previously claimed to have found a large number of severe vulnerabilities in key internet infrastructure code. Depthfirst now says its model has further identified multiple high-risk vulnerabilities that Mythos missed, all at a lower cost (approximately $1,000 compared to $10,000).Depthfirst CEO Qasim Mithani stated that the company has improved vulnerability detection efficiency through a “single-task-optimized AI model,” significantly reducing the cost of security analysis while enhancing coverage depth.The company completed $80 million in funding in March this year, achieving a valuation of $580 million. Alongside this, it launched the “Open Defense Initiative,” providing $5 million worth of AI detection credits to open-source developers and critical infrastructure projects for vulnerability scanning and security audits. (Forbes)
Franklin Templeton, the parent company of Kraken and a global asset management giant, has announced a collaboration with Kraken to develop on-chain investment products and advance the tokenization of traditional financial assets. The two parties will combine Franklin Templeton's experience in asset tokenization and compliant fund issuance with Kraken's trading, custody, and global user infrastructure, focusing on launching compliant products such as tokenized funds and on-chain wealth management. This initiative aims to bridge the connection between traditional finance and the crypto market. (Coindesk)
According to Bloomberg, London-based blockchain analytics firm Elliptic Enterprises Ltd. has raised $120 million in a new funding round led by One Peak Partners LLP, with participation from Deutsche Bank and Nasdaq’s venture capital arm. The company’s post-money valuation stands at $670 million. Simone Maini, CEO of Elliptic, stated that the funds will be used to scale service adoption and expand its global business footprint. Against the backdrop of this financing round, major traditional financial institutions are intensifying their strategic investments in the digital assets space.
Odaily Odaily: Blockchain analytics company Elliptic has completed a new $120 million funding round at a valuation of approximately $670 million. The round was led by One Peak Partners, with participation from Deutsche Bank, the venture arm of Nasdaq, and the British Business Bank. Existing investors, including JPMorgan Chase, also followed on.Founded in 2013, Elliptic provides crypto transaction monitoring and anti-money laundering (AML) and sanctions compliance tools for financial institutions and law enforcement agencies. The company currently screens over 1 billion transactions weekly for more than 700 clients, supporting the compliance operations needed for large banks, asset managers, and fintech companies to conduct digital asset business.
SAP, Europe's largest software giant, has invested in the workflow automation platform n8n. This funding round directly doubled n8n's valuation to $5.2 billion, marking a significant move in SAP's continued expansion in the AI sector. Additionally, SAP has signed a multi-year cooperation agreement with n8n to embed its tools into SAP's own AI agent development platform, Joule Studio. The partnership was officially announced on Tuesday. (Bloomberg)
Genius Group, a Nasdaq-listed bitcoin treasury company, has disclosed a strategic investment of $5 million in digital bank Jewel Bank, acquiring a 9.9% equity stake in the company. It is reported that Jewel Bank is developing a U.S. dollar stablecoin, JUSD, planned to be backed by a 1:1 reserve of cash and U.S. Treasury bonds, with a target launch in the second half of 2026. The bank will also launch a real-time settlement system and offer white-label banking and stablecoin infrastructure services for enterprises. Following this investment, Genius Group will enter the regulated digital banking and stablecoin issuance sector. (Globenewswire)
AI character economy platform Charms Interactive has announced the completion of a $1.5 million pre-seed funding round, with participation from Lattice, JME, Coinbase Ventures (Base Ecosystem Fund), Gidorah (Echo), and others. Charms has simultaneously launched its product, Charms.ai, aiming to upgrade "AI characters" from application features to tradable, ownable, and sustainable on-chain economic assets. (Decrypt)
According to Odaily, AI startup White Circle has completed an $11 million seed funding round, with participation from Romain Huet of OpenAI, Durk Kingma of Anthropic, and several other executives from prominent AI companies. The company provides a unified API for real-time monitoring of large model inputs and outputs, used to detect hallucinations, prompt injection attacks, harmful content, model drift, and malicious user behavior. It also supports custom security policies (such as rate limiting and banning) and automated governance. (Techfundingnews)