AI-Blockchain Ventures Capture Investors’ Interest

AI-Blockchain solutions are gaining traction among investors as signs of cryptocurrency market recovery emerge, boosted by the launch of Bitcoin (ETFs) in January.

Bitcoin (ETFs) were introduced in January 2024, there are indications that opinion around cryptocurrencies has improved, and the first quarter of 2024 is coming to a close, thanks to these developments.

Following an extended winter period, the favorable market dynamics may encourage increased venture capital investment. A report from Galaxy Digital indicates that venture capital firms in the cryptocurrency and AI-blockchain industries raised $5.75 billion across 58 funds in 2023.

This figure represents a decrease from the record year of $37.7 billion across 262 funds in 2022.In the last quarter of 2023, venture capital funding reached $1.9 billion, representing a 2.5% increase from the previous quarter.

This marked the first time since the start of 2022 that venture capital investments in cryptocurrency businesses had increased. The first signs of recovery appeared in this quarter.

Investors are drawn to the rising development of solutions that combine AI-blockchain technologies, as well as goods that target institutional investors entering the cryptocurrency market.

VC Roundup includes startups that successfully secured financing in the first few weeks of March.Utila, a wallet provider that focuses on enterprise-level transactions, had successfully obtained seed funding for $11.5 million from NFX, Wing VC, and Framework Ventures, in addition to angel investors Balaji Srinivasan, Charlie Songhurst, and Surojit Chatterjee.

The business provides institutional investors with a self-custody wallet platform that supports a variety of blockchains, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, among others.

According to Utila, activities on the platform have amounted to more than three billion dollars over the last half-year. Hedge funds, over-the-counter (OTC) desks, market makers, brokers, and token issuers are some of the of the clients the firm works with.

Additional investors in the company include, amongst others, Fansanara Digital Ventures, North Island Ventures, Republic Capital, Liquid2, Inspired Capital, Lyrik Ventures, DCG Expeditions, Launchpad Capital, and Shima Capita. Furthermore, the company has received funding from Fansanara.

Synnax has successfully received a pre-seed investment round of one million dollars to establish a credit intelligence platform that centers on grading standards in the digital asset business. No Limit Holdings was the principal investor in the financing round.

Synnax intends to use the injection of funds to develop its platform, creating an objective credit rating standard to ease the transition from the traditional private credit market to blockchain technology.

A decentralized artificial intelligence model is utilized by the startup company, which was established in Dubai, to overcome the deficiencies of the existing credit rating systems, which include bias and a lack of transparency.

Additionally, global investors such as Edessa Capital, Kenetic Capital, Bitscale, Ryze Capital, MH Ventures, Hex Trust, Moonvault, GameFi Ventures, Typhon Ventures, Ausvic Capital, Drops Ventures, and Everstake Ventures contributed to the funding round. Polychain Capital was the lead investor in Sahara’s seed investment round, which brought in $6 million.

Other investors included Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel and Canonical Crypto, among others. Sandeep Nailwal, an angel investor for Polygon, was also a part of the group. The startup, which is primarily concerned with the development of a decentralized artificial intelligence network, makes it possible to create autonomous knowledge agents (KAs), which are capable of independently analyzing both internal and external proprietary data.

Additionally, it provides data services for the training of artificial intelligence models, with a focus on privacy and security. According to the firm that is being directed by Sean Ren, a professor at the University of Southern California, and Tyler Zhou, a former investment director at Binance Labs, the funds will be used to promote the expansion of further Sahara ecosystem components such as Sahara Vault, Sahara ID, and Sahara Network.

Toncoin, the native token of The Open Network (TON), a blockchain project established by the team behind Telegram in 2019, has been acquired by Mirana Ventures as part of an investment deal worth $8 million.

The TON Foundation, Bybit, and the Mantle Network jointly invested as part of a cooperation between the three organizations. Bybit has incorporated the cryptocurrency known as Toncoin into its operations, offering cashback and prizes for staking.

According to the TON Foundation, the campaign led to a trade volume equivalent to more than twenty-two million dollars. By incorporating TON-based MNT coins, TON Space, which is Telegram’s self-custodial wallet, establishes a connection between its users and the Mantle Network. We will use the money to enhance the neighborhood and fund ongoing projects.

Every month, more than 900 million people use Telegram. Several investors contributed approximately ten million dollars to the Web3 social platform UXLINK. These investors included OKX Ventures, the Web3Port Foundation and numerous others.

These investors came from worldwide, including North America, Asia, and the Middle East. The social networking platform known as UXLINK is a novel concept. UXLINK emphasizes two-way, friendship-like connections, in contrast to standard social media platforms, which primarily concentrate on one-way interactions, such as following someone without any common relationships.

A social decentralized exchange for the trading of digital assets is one of its features, along with a reward module that recognizes users who participate in the network and contribute significantly to its development.

Since its introduction in April 2023, the service has been utilized by more than 3.5 million verified individuals and 75,000 decentralized groups, as stated by UXLINK. The network of Ethereum’s layer 2 TEN has completed a funding round that totaled $9 million.

The funding round was led by the banking consortium R3, while Republic Crypto, KuCoin Labs, Big Brain Capital, DWF Labs, and Magnus Capital also contributed to the round.

Obscuro Labs is responsible for the development of the platform, which combines optimistic rollups and zero knowledge rollups to provide developers with an encrypted layer two option.

The team is now working on different levels of privacy that can be customized within smart contracts. These levels will enable developers to select which aspects of a smart contract should be kept private and made public.

Features such as programmable encryption, immediate bridges, and random number generation will be included in the TEN blockchain, which is presently being tested on the testnet and is scheduled to be put on the mainnet in October.