PANews’ weekly funding roundup showed a pickup in crypto deal activity from Aug. 3 to Aug. 9, with 12 disclosed blockchain financing events totaling more than $94.9 million. Capital was concentrated in infrastructure, stablecoins, real-world assets and centralized finance, while DePIN, GameFi and rewards platforms also logged fresh deals. The headline M&A transaction came from Mastercard, which said it had completed its acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure company BVNK, a deal previously reported in March as being worth up to $1.8 billion. On the financing side, Yellow Card announced a $40 million strategic round backed by SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital and Blockchain Capital. Other disclosed transactions included rounds for Blockspace, MAGNE.AI, InvestiFi, JPYC, Dow Protocol, Vangrid and Bundle. PANews also tracked a separate wave of AI and robotics funding, where large checks continued to cluster around infrastructure, cloud capacity, optical networking and enterprise agent platforms, with Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and the newly launched 224 Ventures also stepping up commitments to the sector.

According to ChainCatcher, Omilia, a Cyprus-based enterprise AI customer service company, has completed a $67 million Series B funding round. The round was led by Expedition Growth Capital. Omilia said the proceeds will be used to accelerate business expansion in North America and other global markets. The company also plans to open its first U.S. office in the second half of 2026. Omilia was founded in 2002. It develops proprietary voice AI technology for enterprise contact centers, providing self-learning agent CX solutions. The platform supports compliance standards including FedRAMP, PCI-DSS, SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR. The funding amount, lead investor, and expansion targets come from the company's announcement. The company expects to establish a U.S. presence in 2026. Its product focuses on voice-driven automation for call center environments. The compliance certifications cover security, data protection, and industry-specific requirements. Expedition Growth Capital led the round.

Freelance journalist Ben Touati says his byline was attached to AI-written gambling guides months after ClickOut Media ended his working relationship. Touati, who said he lost access to company systems on March 9 and formally stopped working with the company on March 23, discovered five articles on his Esports Insider author page on May 26 that he says he never wrote. Press Gazette reported that the pieces were published between 5:39 a.m. and 6 a.m. over four consecutive days through May 29. Touati later filed a complaint on June 2 under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, arguing that his personal data had been misused. The company then removed his byline from the five articles and reassigned them to another writer, according to the report. Press Gazette updated the story again on July 15, saying 28 more gambling-related articles carrying Touati’s name had appeared on the German-language version of Esports Insider, with publication dates ranging from May 15 to July 14. The report also linked the episode to ClickOut Media’s parent company, Finixio, which Press Gazette said generated about £40 million in revenue in 2024 and controls more than 200 domains. The company said it uses AI-assisted content with human checks and editing, but its public statement did not explain why a former contributor’s name appeared on articles he says he did not write.

Sakana AI unveils Fugu, a multi-agent system trained with reinforcement learning. TRINITY and Conductor architecture rival top models in benchmarks. Pricing starts at $20/month, EU access blocked pending GDPR.

MiCA licensing reviews go far beyond an EU address, a director, and paid-in capital. Regulators are testing whether CASPs truly operate inside the EU across staffing, ICT control, financial resilience, and outsourcing.

Researcher Alexander Hanff reveals Chrome downloads Gemini Nano without user consent; file auto-reinstalls on reboot, potentially breaching EU privacy laws.

LayerZero has handled over $260 billion across 830+ omnichain tokens spanning 170+ blockchains. Projects like USDT0, Ondo, and institutions including PayPal and Fidelity leverage its security and compliance framework.

BASIS.pro, backed by Base58 Labs, launches publicly with sub-50μs latency, deterministic rollback, and staking support for BTC/ETH/SOL/PAXG. User rewards come solely from market-neutral arbitrage profits.