Funding Weekly Report | Nine publicly disclosed funding events; stablecoin payment company Rain completed a new round of financing of $250 million, bringing its post-money valuation to $1.95 billion.

Highlights of this episode

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 9 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (January 5-11), with a total funding scale exceeding US$298 million. An overview is as follows:

• In the DeFi sector, two investment and financing events were announced. Among them, RWA project TBook announced that it has completed a total financing of over $10 million, with the new round of financing led by SevenX Ventures.
• One investment and financing event was announced in the Web3+AI sector: NeuroMesh completed a $5 million strategic round of financing, with Alpha Capital and others participating.
• Three investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure & tools sector, including decentralized protocol Babylon completing a $15 million funding round led by a16z Crypto;
• Two investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector, including stablecoin payment company Rain announcing the completion of a new round of financing of $250 million;
• In other Web3 application news, one investment and financing event was announced: Boings.ai, a Web3 value collaboration network, completed a seed round of financing at a valuation of $30 million.

DeFi

RWA project TBook announced that it has raised over $10 million in funding.

TBook, an embedded RWA liquidity layer, announced the completion of a new funding round led by SevenX Ventures, valuing the company at over $100 million. This round also attracted participation from Mask Network, a well-known family office, and existing investors, bringing TBook's total funding to over $10 million. Following this latest funding round, TBook's investors include SevenX Ventures, the Sui Foundation, KuCoin Ventures, Mask Network, HT Capital, VistaLabs, Blofin, Bonfire Union, LYVC, and GoPlus, among others.

The protocol plans to conduct a token generation event (TGE) in the first quarter of 2026. TBook is building an embedded RWA liquidity layer that intelligently connects asset issuers with qualified users through on-chain reputation infrastructure. TBook's infrastructure is built on a proprietary three-layer architecture: the identity layer (incentive passport and vSBT), the intelligence layer (WISE credit scoring), and the settlement layer (TBook Vault).

River receives strategic investment from Maelstrom Fund, owned by Arthur Hayes.

According to an official announcement from River, it has received strategic investment from Maelstrom Fund, established by BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes, to promote the development of its blockchain-abstract stablecoin system.

AI

NeuroMesh has completed a $5 million strategic funding round, with participation from Alpha Capital and others.

NeuroMesh, a company focused on embodied intelligence, announced the completion of a $5 million strategic funding round, valuing the company at $50 million post-money. The round was co-led by Alpha Capital and Coinvestor Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate technology development, expand the team, and further develop applications in industrial automation, service robotics, and other scenarios.

NeuroMesh is dedicated to providing edge intelligence solutions for robots and smart devices. Through its on-device intelligence stack, it enables robots to achieve real-time perception, planning, and execution without relying on the cloud. Simultaneously, the experiences gained by the machine during learning are synchronized to a decentralized "collective brain," achieving continuous evolution and shared learning through network effects. This model makes the learning outcomes among agents verifiable and cumulative, driving the entire network to become increasingly intelligent with use. NeuroMesh's goal is to build a truly native, verifiable, and shared world of autonomous intelligence, making decentralized machine intelligence the infrastructure for next-generation human-machine collaboration.

xAI completes $20 billion Series E funding round, with strategic participation from NVIDIA and Cisco.

According to xAI's official announcement, its Series E funding round exceeded its original target of $15 billion, ultimately raising $20 billion. Participants included Valor Equity, Stepstone, Fidelity, the Qatar Sovereign Wealth Fund, and Baron, with strategic investors including NVIDIA and Cisco. The funds will accelerate the construction of the world's largest GPU cluster and AI infrastructure. By 2025, xAI aims to achieve breakthroughs in Grok models, voice assistants, image generation, and X platform integration, reaching 600 million monthly active users. The Grok 5 model is currently being trained, and the company will continue to develop AI products for consumers and enterprises.

(This financing is not included in the weekly financing report statistics)

AI data platform Protecte has completed a $30 million Series A extended funding round led by a16z.

AI data platform Protege announced the completion of a $30 million Series A extended funding round led by a16z, bringing its total funding to $65 million. Other investors include Footwork, CRV, Bloomberg Beta, Flex Capital, and Shaper Capital. Protege aggregates real-world data from multiple sectors, including healthcare, media, and audio, through licensing, and performs cleaning and format optimization to provide high-quality data support for AI training. Its partners include most of the "AI Big Seven." This round of funding will be used to expand its data reach, deepen institutional partnerships, and develop platform products.

(This financing is not included in the weekly financing report statistics)

Infrastructure & Tools

Decentralized protocol Babylon raises $15 million, led by a16z Crypto.

Babylon, a decentralized protocol co-founded by Stanford University professor David Tse, has raised $15 million in funding. The round was led by a16z Crypto, a subsidiary of Andreessen Horowitz. The project's valuation was not disclosed. Babylon developed a protocol called BTCVaults, designed to allow Bitcoin holders to directly use their Bitcoin as collateral without going through third parties (such as exchanges or stablecoin issuers) while retaining control of their assets. The protocol plans to integrate with the lending protocol Aave in the second quarter of 2026. Tse stated that its goal is to use cutting-edge technology to help users bypass intermediaries and generate returns more directly from their Bitcoin assets. Founded in 2021, Babylon currently has a team of over 40 people and has not yet generated revenue.

Blockchain network ZenChain raises $8.5 million, led by DWF Labs and others.

Blockchain network ZenChain has announced the completion of an $8.5 million funding round. The round was co-led by Watermelon Capital, DWF Labs, and Genesis Capital. Additionally, angel investors have committed an extra $1.5 million ahead of ZenChain's upcoming Token Generation Event (TGE).

The new funding will be used to accelerate core protocol development, expand validator and ecosystem participation, support marketing and ecosystem initiatives, and prepare for the upcoming TGE and mainnet launch milestones. ZenChain aims to build a secure interoperability layer connecting Bitcoin native capital with the Ethereum-compatible (EVM) ecosystem, supporting cross-chain value transfer and decentralized applications. Its design focuses on capital efficiency, validator alignment security, and long-term sustainability.

Barclays invests in stablecoin clearing platform Ubyx

Barclays has made its first investment in a stablecoin-related company, Ubyx, a US-based stablecoin clearing platform, without disclosing the specific size of the investment. Ryan Hayward, Head of Digital Assets and Strategic Investments at Barclays, stated, “As the token, blockchain, and wallet space continues to evolve, expertise will play a crucial role in providing connectivity and infrastructure to enable seamless interaction for regulated financial institutions. This investment aligns with Barclays’ approach of exploring opportunities based on new digital currencies such as stablecoins.”

Centralized Finance

Stablecoin payment company Rain has completed a new funding round of $250 million, bringing its post-money valuation to $1.95 billion.

Stablecoin payment company Rain announced the completion of a new $250 million funding round, bringing its post-money valuation to $1.95 billion. This round was led by ICONIQ, with participation from Sapphire Ventures, Dragonfly, Bessemer, Lightspeed, and Galaxy Ventures. This brings Rain's total funding to over $338 million.

Farooq Malik, co-founder and CEO of Rain, stated that the funds will be used to expand its operations in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and to help the company adapt to the rapidly changing global regulatory environment. Rain currently issues stablecoin payment cards in over 150 countries through a partnership with Visa, allowing cardholders to make purchases at local merchants or withdraw cash from ATMs. The company also plans to integrate with payment systems such as the US ACH and the European SEPA through partner financial institutions. Malik mentioned that the company may pursue strategic acquisitions in the future, having already acquired rewards platform Uptop and currency conversion platform Fern in the past year.

Crypto brokerage firm HabitTrade has completed a nearly $10 million Series A funding round, led by Chizicheng Technology.

Crypto brokerage firm HabitTrade has completed a nearly $10 million Series A funding round, led by Hong Kong-listed Newborn Town, with participation from Bright Venture Capital, StableStock, and others. HabitTrade stated that it will use this funding to accelerate the expansion of its global compliant brokerage infrastructure and promote the integration of traditional capital markets with on-chain finance.

other

Web3 value collaboration network Boings.ai completes seed round financing at a valuation of $30 million.

Boings.ai, a Web3 value collaboration network geared towards the AI era, announced the completion of its seed round funding at a valuation of $30 million. The round was led by Honey Capital, with participation from LandScape Capital, Hotcoin Labs, Starbase, and Go2Mars Labs. The new funds will be used for global expansion, user ecosystem growth, DAO partner acquisition, and to accelerate the development of its AI-driven matching engine. Boings.ai is a task initiation platform that empowers “super-individuals” to instantly convert their skills into on-chain value. The platform is built on the BNB Chain and powered by the 402 protocol.

Venture capital firms

a16z completes $15 billion funding round, will focus on investing in AI and crypto.

a16z announced the completion of raising over $15 billion in funding. This funding includes: the American Dynamism Fund ($1.176 billion), the Apps Fund ($1.7 billion), the Bio+Health Fund ($700 million), the Infrastructure Fund ($1.7 billion), the Growth Fund ($6.75 billion), and other venture capital strategy funds ($3 billion). The announcement stated that its mission is to ensure America's success in the technological competition over the next 100 years, focusing on winning key infrastructures such as AI and encryption. Furthermore, it will promote the application of related technologies in fields such as biology, health, defense, public safety, education, and entertainment.

AppWorks completes its fourth fund raising of $165 million, bringing its total funding to $386 million.

According to an announcement on AppWorks' official website, it has completed the final fundraising for its fourth flagship fund (Fund IV), reaching a size of US$165 million, bringing the company's total fundraising to US$386 million. This round attracted the first joint participation of three major pan-Asian sovereign LPs: Taiwan's National Development Fund, Malaysia's Jelawang Capital, and South Korea's KVIC. Other participating companies included Fubon Life Insurance, Taiwan Mobile, Wistron, Phison, and E Ink.

Since its founding in 2009, AppWorks has built an ecosystem of over 2,000 founders and 653 active startups, focusing in recent years on AI and Web3. Over 70% of its latest accelerator projects come from outside Taiwan. The fund will focus on early-stage investments and has already supported well-known companies such as Lalamove, Animoca, and Flow. AppWorks stated that the fund will focus on high-potential startup opportunities from emerging Asian markets.

Acquisition

Fireblocks acquires crypto accounting platform TRES Finance for $130 million

Blockchain infrastructure company Fireblocks has reached an agreement to acquire crypto accounting platform TRES Finance for $130 million in cash and equity. This is Fireblocks' second acquisition in three months, following its acquisition of crypto wallet startup Dynamic for approximately $90 million last October. Fireblocks co-founder and CEO Michael Shaulov stated that the acquisition of TRES will help the company provide enterprise clients with more comprehensive financial management solutions.

Founded in 2022, TRES Finance's platform helps corporate finance executives and accountants track the flow of crypto assets across multiple platforms and wallets. Its clients include venture capital firm CoinFund, analytics platform Nansen, and the development team behind the Phantom crypto wallet. TRES completed an $11 million funding round in late 2023, and co-founder and CEO Tal Zackon stated that the acquisition price was higher than the company's most recent valuation.

(Mergers and acquisitions are not included in the data statistics of this week's report)