Pantera Capital, Circle Ventures pile on as crypto startups haul $313 million this week

Frontier investors doled out another $313 million for 16 crypto startups this week, bringing total investment into industry players to $25.4 billion this year, DefiLlama data shows.

That’s over 160% more than what was raised in 2024 and far above analysts’ expectations for 2025.

This week was dominated by investments from tech-centric firms including Pantera Capital, Circle Ventures, and Sequoia’s Chinese arm Hongshan Capital.

“The landscape has shifted significantly,” Illia Otychenko, lead analyst at crypto exchange CEX.IO told DL News. “Rather than scattering investments across numerous small projects, VCs are now writing bigger cheques to fewer companies.”

“Deal count has decreased, but the average round size has jumped to nearly $37 million,” Otychenko said.

Here are the crypto companies that raised the most money in the third week of December.

RedotPay, $107 million

RedotPay topped this week’s funding table after raising $107 million in a Series B round, the largest deal disclosed by the company.

The Hong Kong based fintech specialises in stablecoin payments. Backers include GoodWater Capital alongside Pantera Capital, Blockchain Capital, HongShan and Circle Ventures.

RedotPay is building infrastructure that connects crypto rails with everyday finance. Its platform supports crypto to fiat spending through physical and virtual cards, multi currency wallets and cross border payout tools, allowing users to pay at millions of merchants worldwide.

“With our latest funding, we plan to accelerate product innovation and expand our global reach,” CEO Michael Gao said.

Operating under regulatory licences in Hong Kong and Lithuania, RedotPay is positioning itself as a compliant, high throughput gateway for stablecoin use in retail and e-commerce.

RedoPay said it will use the fresh capital to fund global expansion, deeper peer to peer payment functionality and tighter integration of stablecoin services into daily consumer workflows.

Fuse Energy, $70 million

Fuse Energy secured $70 million in Series B financing led by Lowercarbon Capital and Balderton. It will use the cash influx to scale its decentralised physical infrastructure network for renewable power across the US, Ireland and Spain.

The company is building a blockchain based energy network that enables communities and individuals to generate, trade and manage electricity without relying on centralised utilities.

Its platform supports peer to peer power trading and decentralised energy installation, with the ambition of reshaping how energy is produced and distributed.

METYA, $50 million

METYA, an AI-driven web3 social platform, raised $50 million in a strategic round including Castrum Capital, Alpha Capital, M2M Capital and Vertex Capital.

The company is blending artificial intelligence with tokenised social interaction, positioning itself at the intersection of SocialFi and online dating.

Users connect through messaging and content creation, with interactions represented as NFTs on a decentralised network, giving participants ownership of their digital social graph. AI tools support user matching and content moderation, aiming to improve safety and personalisation.

The new funding will be used to expand METYA’s AI infrastructure, accelerate global user growth and further develop its dating to earn model.

You’re reading the latest instalment of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the crypto and DeFi spaces, powered by DefiLlama.

Lance Datskoluo is DL News’ Europe-based markets correspondent. Got a tip? Email at lance@dlnews.com.