Crypto Funding Roundup: Where Smart Money Flowed Last Week

The Big Picture: $169M Across 16 Deals

As someone who’s analyzed market cycles since the ICO craze, I can confirm - when infrastructure projects start vacuuming up funding like this, we’re either at the beginning of something big or witnessing spectacular deployment FOMO. Last week’s totals would’ve been impressive during bull markets, let alone in our current “post-halving digestion phase.”

Notable heavyweight rounds:

• Eigen Labs (EigenLayer) secured $70M from a16z crypto
• Units.Network raised $10M for AI-powered DeFi tools
• Cross-border settlement project XFX landed $9.1M

Infrastructure Projects Building Tomorrow’s Rails

Account Abstraction Gets Space-Grade Security

Stackup’s $4.2M seed round caught my attention - their account abstraction solution comes from a SpaceX mission manager who understands real operational security (unlike some teams that think “security” means writing Medium posts about audits). Their enterprise-grade controls could finally make institutional DeFi onboarding feasible.

The Telegram-DeFi Bridge Expands

TON ecosystem project TAC raised $11.5M to bring EVM compatibility to Telegram’s 800M users. While skeptics question whether messaging apps need built-in leveraged yield farming, the strategic play here is obvious: capture emerging markets where Telegram is already the de facto internet.

AI Continues Eating Crypto (and VC Budgets)

SparkChain AI’s \(10.8M raise exemplifies the trend of decentralized compute networks - essentially Airbnb for GPUs. Meanwhile, PublicAI secured \)8M for brainwave data collection hardware (yes, you read that right). My take? We’re seeing Phase 2 of crypto-AI convergence: moving beyond tokenized chatbots to actual infrastructure synergies.

The Analyst Perspective

These deals reveal three strategic bets:

1. Institutions want compliant onramps (see Ubyx’s $10M for stablecoin rails)
2. Layer 2 ecosystems are becoming platform plays
3. AI needs blockchain more than blockchain needs AI The most surprising detail? Quantum computing defense startup Project Eleven raising $6M. Someone’s preparing for a very distant future.

Data source: RootData | Analysis by John Chen, Blockchain Analyst