Weekly Financing Express | 11 projects were invested, with a total disclosed financing of about US$85 million (5.12-5.18)

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina).

Author | Dingdong (@XiaMiPP).

According to incomplete statistics from Odaily, from May 12 to May 18, a total of 11 blockchain-related financing events were announced worldwide, an increase from 8 in the previous week, showing the continued activity in the blockchain field. However, the total amount of funding announced this week was about $89 million, down from $113 million in the previous week, and the size of short-term financing fluctuated and contracted.

Among this week's fundraising highlights, AI video generation platform Hedra performed well, successfully raising $32 million, making it the most funded project of the week. It was followed by blockchain infrastructure platform Openverse Network, which raised $11 million in funding.

The following are the specific financing events (Note: 1. Sorted by the size of the published amount; 2. Excludes fund raising and mergers and acquisitions; 3. *For companies in the "traditional" field whose business is partially involved in blockchain):

AI video generation platform Hedra has closed a $32 million Series A funding round led by a16z Infra

On May 15, AI video generation platform Hedra announced the closing of a $32 million Series A funding round led by a16z Infra with participation from a16z Speedrun, Index Ventures, and Abstract, with the latest round of funding to support team expansion and product development. Hedra plans to triple its headcount from the current 20 by the end of the year. The company also plans to enhance its Character-3 base model, invest in infrastructure to scale video rendering, and build enterprise-centric workflows for faster, higher-quality video production.

Openverse Network closed an $11 million strategic round of funding with participation from Castrum Capital and others

On May 12, Openverse Network, a Layer 0 blockchain infrastructure platform, announced the completion of a $11 million strategic round of financing, with participation from Castrum Capital, TB Ventures, DuckDAO, Asva Capital, etc., and the new funds are intended to be used to accelerate the development of its global ecosystem, including ecological construction, and encourage more developers and partners to join and jointly build a more open and interconnected value network.

Perpl closed a $9.25 million funding round led by Dragonfly

On May 13, Perpl, a Perps DEX project, announced the closing of a $9.25 million funding round led by Dragonfly with participation from Ergonia, Brevan Howard, Breed, L1 D, and CMS, among others. Perpl plans to leverage Monad's high-performance EVM architecture to build a central limit order book (CLOB) on-chain. Based in London, the team aims to launch a testnet and plans to launch the mainnet once it goes live.

KYD Labs closed a $7 million seed round led by a16z Crypto

On May 14, blockchain ticketing platform KYD Labs announced the closing of a $7 million seed round led by a16z Crypto. Designed to address lost revenue by giving artists and venues control over ticket sales, fan data, and revenue, KYD Labs is built on Solana to allow fans to quickly purchase tickets, with plans to expand to more than 100 venues in the U.S. by 2026.

Turtle Club, an on-chain liquidity distribution protocol, closed a $6.2 million seed funding round

On May 12, Turtle Club, an on-chain liquidity distribution protocol, today announced the closing of a $6.2 million seed round led by THEIA, with participation from Susquehanna, Consensys, and Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, among others.

Solana's eco-ticketing platform XP has closed a $6.2 million funding round led by Blockchange

On May 16, Solana's ecological ticketing platform XP closed a $6.2 million seed round led by Blockchange with participation from L1 D and Reflexive.

XP is reportedly a Solana-based ticketing platform that sells tickets at discounts, but hints at greater ambitions in the future in terms of fan experience.

Nirvana Labs, a blockchain cloud computing company, closed a $6 million seed expansion round led by Jump Crypto and others

On May 13, blockchain cloud computing company Nirvana Labs closed a $6 million seed expansion round co-led by Jump Crypto and Crucible Capital, with participation from RW 3 Ventures, Castle Island, and Hash 3 VC, bringing its total funding to $11.8 million.

Unlike traditional cloud service providers that centralize computing resources, Nirvana uses a bare metal infrastructure that serves only one client per server, the company offers compute services tailored to the crypto space. Nirvana already serves infrastructure providers such as BitGo and Fireblocks, as well as protocol foundations such as Avalanche and Berachain, and plans to serve as a front-end service to help organizations deploy on Internet filtering startup DoubleZero.

Giza, an AI platform based on Web3 protocols, announced that it has closed a total of $5.2 million in funding

On May 16, Giza, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform based on smart contracts and web3 protocols, announced that it had closed a total of $5.2 million in funding for Xenocognitive Finance's infrastructure, with investors including Base Ecosystem Fund, Echo, CoinFund, Re 7 Capital, Stake Capital, ID Theory, CONTANGO, and others.

According to reports, Giza is developing a trustless protocol that aims to realize the decentralization of machine learning inference computing and provide a guarantee for the open economy of open-source AI. It enables AI developers to generate zero-knowledge proofs, ensuring transparency and trustworthiness in the deployment of verifiable machine learning models.

XSY.fi launched its core product, Unity, and completed a $5 million Pre-A round of funding to advance DeFi infrastructure

On May 16, XSY.fi, a decentralized financial capital management platform, announced that its core product, Unity (UTY), has officially launched a beta version on the Avalanche blockchain and closed a $5 million Pre-A round of financing. The round was co-led by Protagonist Ventures and Borderless Capital, with participation from Paper Ventures, Chainview Capital, Blizzard the Avalanche Fund, Sonic Boom Ventures, and others.

Unity is a new digital synthetic USD asset designed to improve on-chain liquidity and capital efficiency, by combining spot longs and perpetual contract shorts to build a Delta neutral strategy, allowing users to earn sustainable income while maintaining their original asset exposure. In beta, Unity has secured over $20 million in asset commitments and will launch a limited-time credit incentive program to encourage early participation.

Blockchain investment firm Coinsilium raises £1.25 million to launch a Bitcoin financial strategy

On May 16, blockchain investment firm Coinsilium Group announced the closing of a £1.25 million institutional funding round and the simultaneous launch of a £250,000 retail fundraising plan to advance the Bitcoin reserve strategy. The private placement was priced at 3p per share, and the oversubscribed proceeds will be injected into its wholly-owned subsidiary, Forza (Gibraltar) Limited, as the operating entity. Malcolm Palle, the company's executive chairman, said the funding would accelerate the implementation of the Bitcoin Reserve Program. At the same time, Oak Securities was appointed as an associate broker to strengthen the ability to operate the capital markets. The new issue is expected to be listed on the Aquis Growth Market on 22 May and will have a total share capital of 274.7 million shares upon completion. Board member James Van Straten highlighted that the company is fully focused on its Bitcoin reserve strategy, and the fundraising includes an arrangement to offset a £196,800 service fee with 6.56 million ordinary shares.

SpaceComputer closed a pre-seed round of funding led by Primitive

On May 13, the SpaceComputer project announced the closing of a pre-seed funding round led by Primitive, with participation from nascentxyz, tangent_xyz, symbolicvc, publicworksfm, Merkle Ventures, and Star-Shield, as well as angel investors such as loi_luu, Polygon co-founders, and Melt_ Dem and others also participated in this round of financing. The exact amount of the financing was not disclosed.