VC Monthly Report in July: Fundraising Market Rebounds, Number of Deals Up 12%, Amount Up 38%

Author: WuBlockchain

According to RootData statistics, there were 111 publicly disclosed Crypto VC investment projects in July, an increase of 12% month-on-month (99 projects in June 2024) and an increase of 35% year-on-year (82 projects in July 2023). Note: Since not all fundraisings are announced in the same month, the above statistics may increase in the future. The breakdown by sector is as follows:

CeFi: ~7.2%

DeFi: ~26.1%

NFT/GameFi: ~13.5%

L1/L2: ~8.1%

RWA/DePIN: ~8.1%

Tool/Wallet: ~7.2%

AI: ~10.8%

The total fundraising amount in July was $1.02 billion, an increase of 37.8% month-on-month ($740 million in June 2024) and an increase of 85.5% year-on-year ($550 million in July 2023). The top 10 fundraising rounds by amount are as follows:

Australia-based crypto mining company Iris Energy raised $413.4 million through stock issuance to fund its expansion plans for 2024. From May 15 to June 28, the company sold 39.8 million shares through its market stock issuance plan (ATM), generating a total revenue of $413.4 million. The company raised $257 million through equity financing in the first quarter and an additional $44.8 million from March 31 to May 15. In total, the company raised approximately $714 million in the first half of the year.

Riot Platforms acquired Block Mining for $92.5 million, increasing its capacity by 60 megawatts, with plans to reach 110 megawatts by the end of 2024. Block Mining Group is a Bitcoin mining infrastructure and hosting service provider based in Chicago, Illinois.

Open-source AI platform Sentient completed an $85 million seed round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, HashKey Capital, and others. Sentient aims to build open-source AI models through community contributions, with plans to launch its testnet in Q3 this year and develop using Polygon's technology.

Singapore-based blockchain payment settlement company Partior announced it has completed a $60 million Series B funding round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Valor Capital Group and Jump Trading Group. Partior aims to transform global clearing and settlement infrastructure and currently supports USD, EUR, and SGD.

B3 Fun, a gaming ecosystem built on Base, has secured $21 million in funding led by Pantera Capital, Hashed Fund, and Mantle.

Visa’s data partner Allium Labs completed a $16.5 million Series A funding round led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Amplify Partners. The funds will be used for data infrastructure construction and market promotion.

Bitcoin restaking protocol Lombard completed a $16 million seed round led by Polychain Capital, with participation from BabylonChain, Inc., Franklin Templeton, Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund, Nomad Capital, and others. Lombard will use the funds to expand its Bitcoin restaking business and develop jointly with Bitcoin staking protocol Babylon.

Ethereum scaling solution platform Caldera completed a $15 million Series A funding round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, with participation from Dragonfly, Sequoia Capital, Arkstream Capital, and Lattice. Caldera plans to use the funds to build Metalayer, integrating numerous Layer 2 and Layer 3 solutions.

Chainbase completed a $15 million Series A funding round co-led by Tencent Investment Group and Matrix Partners China, with other investors including Folius Ventures, Hash Global, JSquare, Mask Network, and Bodl Ventures. Chainbase co-founder and COO Chris Feng stated that the round was completed with a structure of equity plus token warrants in Q4 last year. The mainnet and governance token CBT are expected to launch in Q4 this year, with the token used to reward data providers, node operators, and early users.

Blast ecosystem token distribution protocol ZAP has completed a $15.1 million funding round, reaching a valuation of $100 million. ZAP’s anonymous founder and CEO Francis stated that ZAP conducted three funding rounds: a $900,000 seed round in December last year, a $2.1 million private round last month, and a $12.1 million ongoing treasury sale. Seed and private round investors include Rarestone Capital, Cypher Capital, Sharding Capital, and others.

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