Seed round

Elorian

2026-07-18 10:44:30

Visual reasoning AI startup Elorian raises $55 million seed round at a $300 million post-money valuation

U.S.-based visual reasoning AI startup Elorian has raised $55 million in a seed round, reaching a $300 million post-money valuation, according to BlockBeats. The valuation stands out because the company has not yet released a product. The round was co-led by Striker Ventures, Menlo Ventures and Altimeter Capital, with participation from Nvidia and Google senior vice president Jeff Dean. Elorian formally emerged from stealth in April 2026. The company is led by two co-founders with major AI backgrounds: Andrew Dai, who spent 14 years at Google DeepMind and worked on early large language model research that later informed ChatGPT development, and Yinfei Yang, who previously led work on multimodal AI systems at Apple. The startup has also assembled a core team drawn from leading AI labs around the world, covering pretraining, data and multimodal AI. BlockBeats said Elorian’s $300 million post-money valuation is roughly 20 to 60 times the traditional pre-seed valuation range of $5 million to $15 million, highlighting the premium institutional capital is placing on founders with advanced AI research pedigrees.

1860

RWA

2026-07-10 19:26:13

NUVA Digital Raises $5.2M Seed Funding Led by Morgan Creek Digital for RWA Platform

NUVA Digital has secured $5.2M in seed funding from Morgan Creek Digital to develop its RWA trading platform NUVA, which features stablecoin deposits, yield tokens, and on-chain reserve proofs. The funds will support multi-chain deployment and institutional tool development.

550

Play-to-Earn

2026-07-08 18:26:14

Merit Circle Raises $4.5M Seed Round to Revolutionize Play-to-Earn Gaming

Merit Circle DAO has closed a $4.5 million seed round from investors including DeFiance Capital, Mechanism Capital, and Spartan Group, aiming to transform the play-to-earn gaming industry through decentralized governance.

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Merit Circle

2026-07-08 18:20:15

Merit Circle Raises $4.5M in Seed Round to Revolutionize Play-to-Earn Gaming

Merit Circle has successfully completed a $4.5 million seed round with investors including DeFiance Capital, Mechanism Capital, and others. The DAO aims to transform the gaming industry through Play-to-Earn models, investing in games like Axie Infinity.

400

YEET

2026-07-08 15:10:17

YEET Crypto Casino Hits $450M in Volume in Three Months, Led by WSOP Champion and Crypto Veterans

YEET, a crypto casino founded by WSOP champion Ben Lamb and rektguy co-founder Mando, has surpassed $450M in trading volume and 15,000 users within three months of launch, backed by a $7.75M seed round led by Dragonfly.

440

Ark Labs

2026-07-02 22:45:14

Ark Labs Raises $5.2M Led by Tether to Bring Programmable Finance to Bitcoin

Ark Labs, a startup focused on enhancing Bitcoin's financial capabilities, has raised $5.2 million in a seed funding round led by Tether, with participation from Ego Death Capital, Epoch VC, Lion26, Sats Ventures, Contribution Capital, Anchorage Digital, and angel investor Ralph Ho (former VP of Finance at PayPal). The funds will accelerate development of its Arkade platform, an execution layer designed to bring programmability to Bitcoin, enabling complex financial operations like payments, lending, and stablecoin issuance. Tether's CEO Paolo Ardoino emphasized that stablecoins were born on Bitcoin and expanding stablecoin activity on the network is a priority. Ark Labs plans to use the capital to scale its ecosystem, expand its developer relations team, and support partners building production-grade applications. This round brings Ark Labs' total institutional funding to over $7.7 million, following earlier backing from Draper Associates, Fulgur Ventures, and Axiom Capital.

490

tokenization

2026-06-27 08:40:15

Tokenized Settlement Network Metal Raises Seed Round Led by Airwallex and Capital49

代币化金融产品结算网络Metal完成种子轮融资，由Airwallex及Capital49领投，具体金额未披露。Airwallex同时成为Metal的首位设计合作伙伴。此番投资引发关注，因为Airwallex创始人Jack Zhang此前曾公开质疑稳定币降低外汇费用的能力，认为从稳定币到法币的转换成本高于银行间市场。该事件反映了传统金融支付巨头对代币化基础设施的复杂态度。

1300

Mega-funds

2026-06-27 04:01:05

20 Top VCs' Decade-Long Data Reveals How Mega-Funds Are Taking Over Seed Rounds——And Where Emerging Managers Can Still Win

A comprehensive analysis by Murph Capital and Harmonic dissects the early-stage investment behavior of 20 mega-funds (each with over $10B AUM) across three macro eras: SaaS (2015-2019), Zero Interest (2020-2022), and AI (2023-2026). Key findings: mega-funds have increased seed deal count by 2.37x, lead over 50% of their seed rounds, and invest in rounds 4.3x larger than the market median. A16z, Sequoia, and General Catalyst now allocate 40-50% of their total deal flow to early-stage. However, there is a direct negative correlation between deal velocity and portfolio quality—funds with the highest volume saw seed-to-Series B conversion rates plummet by 10-25 percentage points. The article builds a "Danger Index" to rank which mega-funds pose the greatest competitive threat to emerging managers, concluding that EM survival depends on niche sector focus, smaller check sizes, and disciplined deployment rather than trying to outrun the giants.

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