AWeb3VC - Funding Round Up #78 & #79

🗓️ Week(s) of:

Jun 23-29 & Jun 30 - Jul 6, 2024

Also be sure to follow me on X (fka. Twitter) @aweb3vc 🚀

(See "Funding Rounds" section for the complete list of deals)

Sorry for falling behind the past two weeks. I had been attending to family matters and had to put my funding tracking on the back burner. However, no rest for the wicked, and what a time it has been on the Web3 venture front.

$949M+ was raised across 69 funding rounds in Web3. Just when we thought crypto markets were in turmoil and a bear market was looming, Web3 venture has provided a shimmer of hope. The past two weeks have witnessed some of the heaviest and largest deal flow of 2024 so far. Last week alone recorded the second-highest total capital raised for the year. Whoever said VCs run off to the Amalfi Coast in the summer?

Now, while sudden heavy capital flow amidst a looming slowdown in broader crypto markets could signal a final hurrah before an eventual venture funding freeze (as happened at this point in 2022), I remain optimistic that 2024 will still bring a healthy fundraising environment. Over $1.5B has been announced in new venture funds over the past quarter, providing more dry powder to be deployed later this year. Not to mention, looming regulatory clarity coming out of the US and prospects for an eventual rate cut could foster a healthy crypto market come Q4.

Zooming in, AI enabled by blockchain or Web3 economics is quickly emerging as one of the hottest themes in 2024. The past two weeks alone saw over $150M go into projects and companies building around the decentralized AI stack, including compute, data availability, and model development. Given how well the AI narrative has performed in traditional equity and venture markets, it's no surprise that Web3 founders and venture funds are following the trend.

Funding Round Up #78 (Jun 23-29)

Funding Round Up #79 (Jun 30 - Jul 3)

🏆 Largest Funding Round

➡️ Iris Energy announced $413.4M in funding made through an at-the-market stock offering of its public shares. The company sold 39.8M shares during the period from May through June and still has the capacity to sell more shares. The company is publicly listed on NASDAQ under the ticker IREN.

Iris Energy owns and operates next-generation data centers powered by 100% renewable energy. Their facilities are optimized for Bitcoin mining, AI cloud services, and other power-dense computing tasks. The company operates four facilities in North America, specifically in British Columbia, Canada, and Texas, USA.

Why this matters?👉Public Bitcoin mining companies like Iris Energy have been actively raising funds through equity financing since the end of 2023. This coincided with Bitcoin’s rally, which helped companies raise billions in capital to fund new mining equipment and expansion plans both before and after Bitcoin’s halving in April. At the same time, companies are learning from the last cycle, favoring equity over debt financing to provide significant cash buffers without the worries of eventual debt servicing.

💸 Funding Rounds

Top 15 Rounds

Want access to our complete? Sign-up here so I can notify you when the dataset becomes available to share. Also don’t hesitate to drop me a line to say hi: [email protected]

All Rounds

Infrared - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Liquid staking platform for Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) consensus mechanism pioneered by Berachain: https://infrared.finance/

Hut 8 - Convertible Note ($150.0M) | Cryptocurrency mining and blockchain infrastructure provider established through an exclusive partnership with Bitfury: https://hut8.io/

Net Zero Company - Seed ($5.0M) | Provider of carbon dioxide removal credits from diversified projects, utilizing blockchain technology: https://netzerocompany.org/

Midle - Grant (Not Disclosed) | Platform designed to enhance user acquisition, engagement, and retention for brands utilizing task-to-earn incentives: https://midle.io/

Allora (fka. Upshot) - Strategic ($3.0M) | Self-improving decentralized machine learning (ML) model network: https://www.allora.network/

Shaga - Seed ($1.0M) | Low latency cloud gaming platform enabled by an underlying decentralized physical infrastructure network: https://www.shaga.xyz/

AYDO - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Platform that enables users to stream data from IoT devices to DePIN protocols: https://www.aydo.ai/

Touchbrick - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Privacy-first network for AI training on sensitive enterprise data through synthetic datasets: https://www.touchbrick.com/

Roam Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Platform for sharing real-time wireless network performance leveraging user-labeled data measurements: https://www.roamnetwork.xyz/

YOM - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized pixel-streaming infrastructure network: https://www.yom.ooo/

Kaisar Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | GPU-as-a-service protocol incentivizing both GPU providers and end-users: https://kaisar.io/

ROVR - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized, ultra-high-precision multidimensional digital twin platform for 3D AI engines: https://www.rovr.network/#/home

Enso - Private Sale ($4.2M) | Layer 1 Cosmos-based blockchain network and intent engine: https://www.enso.finance/

Elfin Metaverse (aka. Elfin Kingdom) - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | All-in-one eSports gaming platform and open-world metaverse: https://elfinmetaverse.com/

Conduit - Series A ($37.0M) | Infrastructure platform that enables developers to deploy production grade Optimistic (OP) rollups using Optimism Collective's OP Stack: https://conduit.xyz/

NovaNet - Seed ($3.0M) | zkVM and decentralized proving network enabling an incentive layer for zero knowledge proofs (ZKPs): https://www.novanet.xyz/

GolfN - Seed ($1.3M) | Web3 golf play-to-earn (P2E) game: https://www.golfn.com/

AnchorZero - Seed ($8.0M) | Tax planning and Roth IRA platform for founders: https://www.anchorzero.com/

Nexis Network - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Layer 1 EVM compatible blockchain network catered to artificial intelligence: https://nexis.network/

Crossover Markets - Series A ($12.0M) | Digital assets trading firm and developers of CROSSx, an execution-only cryptocurrency electronic communication network (ECN) for institutional participants: https://crossovermarkets.com/

Covalent - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Modular data infrastructure and decentralized network: https://www.covalenthq.com/

Ora (fka. Hyper Oracle) - Series A ($20.0M) | Verifiable oracle protocol that enables AI and compute on any chain: https://www.ora.io/

TradeDog Market Manager (aka. TDMM) - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Market making platform helping to manage the entire lifecycle of crypto tokens: https://tdmm.io/

Argo Digital Gold - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Online gold dealer offering secure digital gold and precious metals trading and storage: https://www.argovault.com/

Redacted - Private Sale ($10.0M) | Web3 entertainment ecosystem and datasphere powered by blockchain and AI: https://www.multifarm.io/

Fenix Finance - Seed ($0.3M) | Unified trading and liquidity marketplace for Blast: https://www.fenixfinance.io/

U2U Network - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Directed acyclic graph (DAG)-based Layer 1 network with EVM compatibility, designed for decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) applications: https://u2u.xyz/

Rebar Labs - Seed ($2.9M) | Developer of maximum extractable value (MEV)-aware infrastructure, products, and research for Bitcoin: https://rebarlabs.io/

XProtocol - Seed ($4.4M) | Modular entertainment-focused platform leveraging Superchain technology, built on Base: https://xprotocol.org/

XProtocol - Strategic ($0.8M) | Modular entertainment-focused platform leveraging Superchain technology, built on Base: https://xprotocol.org/

Bluefin (fka. Firefly, dTrade) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized orderbook-based cryptocurrency and perpetual futures exchange built for both professional and first-time traders: https://bluefin.io/

XRADERS (aka. XR Labs) - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | AI-powered curated expert insights platform for crypto investors: https://xraders.xyz/

MegaETH - Seed ($20.0M) | High-throughput and low-latency EVM-compatible Layer 2 network accelerating the scalability endgame of Ethereum: https://megaeth.systems/

Tomarket - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Decentralized marketplace for new digital assets, enabling transactions through a mutual mortgage method: https://tomarket.ai/

Futureverse - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Immersive and vertically-integrated metaverse platform and content company: https://www.futureverse.com/

Balance - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Web3 gaming platform and ecosystem, developed by E-PAL: https://balance.game/

Carv - Other ($35.0M) | Credential and self-sovereign identity (SSI) data infrastructure focused on gaming: https://carv.io/

Nubila - Seed ($2.5M) | Data oracle platform specializing in providing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) data to the Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) ecosystem: https://nubila.ai/

Kana Labs - Seed+ (Not Disclosed) | Web3 middleware solution that enables multi-chain DApps while gaining native liquidity aggregation and cross-chain capabilities: https://www.kanalabs.io/

MonkeyBit - Seed ($2.0M) | Web3 social amusement ecosystem built on Polygon: https://monkeybit.io/

Mamori - Seed ($5.0M) | Machine learning-enabled pathfinder addressing the challenges of blockchain value extraction: https://mamori.xyz/

Solayer - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Restaking network built natively on Solana: https://solayer.org/

Iris Energy - Private Placement ($413.4M) | Next-generation data centers powered by 100% renewable energy optimized for Bitcoin mining, AI cloud services, and other power-dense compute: https://iren.com/

Lombard - Seed ($16.0M) | Bitcoin restaking protocol enabling yield-bearing BTC to move cross-chain without fragmenting liqudity: https://www.lombard.finance/

Sentiment - Seed ($85.0M) | AI research organization fostering an open-source artificial intelligence development platform: https://sentient.foundation/

Prodia - Seed ($15.0M) | Distributed cloud computing platform and network of graphics processing units (GPUs) for AI inference: https://prodia.com/

OpenLedger - Seed ($8.0M) | Sovereign data blockchain infrastructure for artificial intelligence development: https://www.openledger.xyz/

RedStone - Series A ($15.0M) | Decentralized modular cross-chain data oracle: https://redstone.finance/

Avarik Saga - Private Sale (Not Disclosed) | Web3 anime gaming ecosystem leveraging AI: https://avariksaga.com/

Pi Squared - Seed ($12.5M) | Developer of Universal Settlement Layer (USL) a zero knowledge (ZK) circuit and universal proof system across all languages and virtual machines without requiring any translation to a common language: https://pi2.network/

Ethos (aka. Ethos Network) - Seed ($1.8M) | Web3 credibility scoring, reputation, and social profile platform: https://www.ethos.network/

Cambria - Seed ($2.5M) | Runescape-inspired risk-to-earn massive multiplayer online game (MMO) with onchain stakes: https://lobby.cambria.gg/

Sendblocks - Seed ($8.2M) | Blockchain data management and access platform: https://sendblocks.io/

Onaji - Seed ($2.5M) | Machine learning platform for smart contract blockchains: https://www.onaji.io/

Astria - Strategic ($12.5M) | Modular blockchain that allows rollups to share a decentralized sequencer network: https://www.astria.org/

Trever - Seed ($2.6M) | Unified system for financial institutions to integrate and manage digital assets: https://trever.io/

Pac Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Self-paying lending and margin trading protocol built on Blast L2: https://pac.finance/

Plaza Finance - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Cross-ecosystem hub for programmable derivatives: https://www.plaza.finance/

Nycrypto Labs (aka. Tidus) - Seed ($0.8M) | Developer of accessible decentralized products including Tidus, a user-centric decentralized wallet: https://tiduswallet.com/

QED Protocol - Seed ($6.0M) | Zero-knowledge (ZK) native protocol: https://qedprotocol.com/

Compute Labs - Seed ($3.0M) | Developer of Compute Tokenization Protocol (CTP) and GPU Restaking platform: https://www.computelabs.ai/

FreeBnk - Seed ($3.0M) | Crypto focused neobank offering a comprehensive blockchain-based financial ecosystem: https://www.freebnk.io/

Sun Protcol - Seed (Not Disclosed) | Web3 cross-chain aggregation protocol designed to aggregate liquidity: https://sunbsc.top/#/

Monad Pad - Seed ($0.9M) | Token and NFT launchpad built on Monad: https://www.monadpad.xyz/

UniSat - Strategic (Not Disclosed) | Non-custodial wallet for Bitcoin, Ordinals, and other BRC-20 assets: https://unisat.io/

Swords & Dugeons - Private Sale ($5.0M) | Multiplayer idle roleplay game (RPG): https://swnd.io/

Hello.app - Seed ($0.5M) | Decentralized cloud stroage application: https://hello.app/

XOOB (fka. Launchjoy) - Seed ($1.6M) | Web3 gaming platform providing unquie quest experience combining points farming, mystery box sales and mini-games: https://www.xoob.gg/

Altcoinist - Seed ($1.5M) | Token gated private community and monetization platform for creators: https://www.altcoinist.com/

New Funds

UXLINK - UXLINK Ecosystem Fund (Not Disclosed)

Sollong - Sollong Foundation Fund ($30.0M)

Colosseum - Fund I ($60.0M)

Bitget - TON Ecosystem Fund ($20.0M)

Hash3 - Seed Stage Crypto Fund ($29.0M)

🙌 Cool Resources

StartupsCatalyst, by RootData, a comprehensive list of Web3 hackathons, accelerators, and grants

🐕 About

AWeb3VC is a source for venture funding news, emerging startups and trends across Web3. I've been closely following cryptocurrencies and digital assets since 2013 and started working in the space since 2018. Now I'm on a mission to build the most extensive venture ecosystem for BUIDLERS in Web3, starting first by tracking those BUIDLERS.