XDOF, a robotics startup collecting real-world teleoperation data to train general-purpose robots, is in late-stage B-round negotiations at a valuation of around $1.2 billion, led by 8VC. The company, which emerged from stealth less than three months ago, has annualized revenue nearing $50 million, attracting multiple VCs. It previously raised $70 million in Series A from Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Lux, and Spark Capital. Terms are not finalized and the exact amount remains undisclosed.

A dense stretch of crypto and adjacent market developments unfolded between Aug. 25 and Aug. 26. The US Treasury said it is launching a Quantum Readiness Working Group, a public-private effort meant to help the financial sector migrate toward quantum-resistant technology in an orderly and operationally resilient way. One of its three workstreams is focused on digital assets and emerging technology risks. In Thailand, the securities regulator opened a public consultation on draft rules for crypto ETFs, with Bitcoin and Ether set as the only eligible assets at the initial stage and comments accepted through Sept. 20. Product launches and market-structure changes also stood out. Grayscale converted its Zcash Trust into the Zcash ETF, ticker ZCSH, and listed it on NYSE Arca, calling it the first ETF to provide direct Zcash exposure. The fund charges a 2.5% fee, and Grayscale said the revenue generated from that fee will flow back to the Zcash ecosystem. BlackRock, meanwhile, cut the minimum trade size for investors using in-kind Bitcoin subscriptions to create ETF shares from $25 million to $1 million in July. Robbie Mitchnick, BlackRock’s head of digital assets, said IBIT has now processed more than $5 billion of those conversions. Elsewhere, Kraken said some customer accounts were temporarily inaccessible after receiving tiny token transfers tied to a wallet associated with sanctioned rival HTX, while LayerZero outlined plans for an institutional onchain exchange called ATLAS. Several funding rounds, whale-position updates, tokenized-equity products, and ETF flow data rounded out the latest batch of market-moving items.

Robotics startup Generalist has completed a new financing round at a $3 billion valuation, raising nearly $200 million, according to TechCrunch, which cited people familiar with the matter. The round was led by 8VC and extends the company’s $400 million Series B financing from June, which had been led by Radical Ventures. With the extension, the total size of that round has reached $600 million. Generalist was founded in 2024 by former Google DeepMind researchers Pete Florence and Andy Zeng, along with former Boston Dynamics engineer Andrew Barry. Its early backers include 8VC, Radical Ventures, Nvidia, Union Square Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, and AI researcher Fei-Fei Li. The company is building foundation AI models for use across different types of robots. TechCrunch reported that Generalist’s Gen 1.5 model can enable robots to learn new tasks from video demonstrations lasting between 3 and 12 seconds. In the broader robotics AI funding field, Physical Intelligence is valued at about $11 billion, Skild AI at $14 billion, and Genesis AI is also in talks to raise capital at a $3 billion valuation.

PANews’ latest weekly funding roundup shows two tracks moving at speed at the same time: AI and robotics continued to attract large checks in the primary market, while crypto funding stayed active across DeFi, privacy infrastructure, on-chain finance, Web3 AI, and prediction markets. In crypto alone, PANews counted five disclosed blockchain financing events worldwide during Aug. 10-16, with aggregate funding of more than $27.5 million. Among the crypto deals, twyne raised a $2.5 million seed round for its DeFi credit delegation layer, Beldex secured $8 million for privacy infrastructure, Blueprint Finance announced a strategic round led by Polychain Capital, NeoSoul closed an $11 million Pre-A round tied to AI economic infrastructure, and Fortune Protocol said its cumulative fundraising has exceeded $4 million. Outside crypto, the biggest headline in the report was M&A: Stripe has finalized an agreement to acquire AI startup OpenRouter for more than $7 billion, though the final price may still change, according to people familiar with the matter cited in the source. The report also noted that OpenAI acquired the InstantDB team. In the broader AI market, Etched raised $700 million at a $21 billion valuation, while companies including DataVita, Groq, Starcloud, Muon Space, Higgsfield, Wispr, and Rillet also announced major financings.

Vals AI, an AI evaluation startup, said it has raised $40 million in Series A funding at a post-money valuation of $400 million. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with existing investors 8VC, Pear VC, and Bloomberg Beta participating again. New investors in the round include HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures. Founded by Rayan Krishnan and Langston Nashold, the company positions itself as an independent evaluator and scorekeeper for large language models. Vals AI works with experts in law, finance, healthcare, and coding to score model outputs in real business settings, while limiting access to its private test sets to reduce benchmark gaming and training directly to the test. The company said its evaluation results have been included in model cards from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI, and that enterprise customers use those results to choose models for production deployments. Vals AI also said its 2025 revenue grew 8x year over year, its customer count doubled, its team tripled in six months, and it launched the code evaluation tool Vals Smith, frontier risk evaluations, and Vals Index 2.0 for expanded economic measurement.

Vals AI, a company focused on evaluating AI models, has raised $40 million in a Series A round at a $400 million valuation, according to ChainCatcher. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, with participation from 8VC, Pear VC, Bloomberg Beta, and newer investors including HRT Ventures and Next Ladder Ventures. The company says it uses its own independent evaluation system to assess frontier models released by OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI, rather than relying on traditional public benchmark tests. That positioning is central to its business as model developers and enterprise users look for ways to compare performance outside widely used public scoring methods. Vals AI plans to use the new capital to expand its evaluation infrastructure. It also intends to launch a testing tool that creates programming benchmarks based on a company’s GitHub codebase. The funding round gives the startup fresh resources to build out both its testing capacity and its product offering for enterprise-oriented model assessment.

B2B stablecoin payments firm Infinite launched Infinite Accounts on April 22, 2026, combining fiat and stablecoin rails via a single API. Powered by Erebor Bank, fiat deposits are FDIC-insured up to $250K, while stablecoins operate on-chain. Targeting payroll, treasury, and merchant platforms.

Kite (formerly Zettablock) secured $18 million in Series A funding co-led by PayPal Ventures and General Catalyst, bringing total funding to $33 million. The company introduced Kite AIR, a platform offering programmable agent identities, native stablecoin payments, and policy enforcement, already integrated with Shopify and PayPal for millisecond settlements.