Deal Flow Digest June 2023
Gm.
Please enjoy the June Deal Flow Digest, a monthly newsletter recapping recent web3 funding rounds.
Be sure to check out the Airtable below with ALL the deals, and the recent hackathon/demo day results (in the links).
“The Institutions are coming”
Market sentiment in June was still pretty negative due to a number of regulatory actions. The SEC filed a lawsuit against Binance, and then Coinbase the day after - it wasn’t pretty!
Then the sentiment noticeably changed on 15-June when Blackrock filed for a spot Bitcoin ETF.
Blackrock, with over $9 trillion in assets and 575-1 track record for ETF Approvals, has renewed hope that there’s a legitimate chance of getting a spot BTC ETF approved.
The market has shifted and definitely is viewing BlackRock’s filing from the perspective of “they wouldn’t have filed if they weren’t going to get approval.”
In regards to timing, it appears tough to say. Current thoughts are that it could be approved as early as mid-August or as late as 1Q24, depending on the amount of delays which normally accompany BTC ETF Filings.
Additionally, on 20-June we get banger headlines such as: Deutsche Bank seeks crypto custody license approval in Germany and EDX crypto exchange goes live offering bitcoin and ether trading, backed by Schwab and Fidelity
The institutions are coming…. The institutions are here?
Top Five Crypto Funding Rounds
Cohere | $270M | Series C | 6/7/2023
Cohere has raised $270 million in Series C funding round led by Inovia Capital. Other investors included Nvidia, Oracle, Salesforce Ventures, DTCP, Mirae Asset, Schroders Capital, SentinelOne, Thomvest Ventures and Index Ventures. This tranche values the company at between $2.1 billion and $2.2 billion. “The new capital will fuel continued development of Cohere’s AI platform, which is focused on enterprise customers, allowing companies to use their preferred cloud provider to increase data privacy and make implementation simpler,” president and COO Martin Kon told TechCrunch via email. “The latest round allows us to invest in compute, grow our team, engage with more of the world’s leading enterprises and further advance our world-leading AI, ultimately empowering companies to build incredible products while keeping their data private and secure.”
Islamic Coin | $200M | 6/27/2023
Islamic Coin, the Shariah-compliant, ethics-first crypto has again shattered records, securing $200M from Alpha Blue Ocean's ABO Digital. The deal follows the signing of an agreement with London-based DDCAP Group in April that paved the way for Haqq Network to integrate with over 300 global Islamic banks and set the foundation for the creation of a Shariah-compliant Web3 alternative to secure financial messaging platform SWIFT, a digital asset platform, Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), tokenization, and other ventures.
Celestial AI | $100M | Series B | 6/28/2023
Celestial AI has raised $100 million in a Series B round led by IAG Capital Partners, Koch Disruptive Technologies and Temasek's Xora Innovation fund. The new funding will be used to support the production of Celestial's photonics platform by expanding the company's engineering, sales and technical marketing departments. Celestial — which began as a portfolio company of The Engine, the VC firm spun out of MIT in 2016 — developed an ostensible solution in its photonics-based architecture, which scales across multiple-chip systems. Using light to transfer data, Celestial’s tech can beam information within chips and chip-to-chip, making both memory and compute available for AI — and other — workloads.
Thunes | $60M | Series C | 6/5/2023
Payment infrastructure platform Thunes has raised $60 million in Series C round led by Marshall Wace. Other investors included Bessemer Venture Partners and Southeast Asian private equity firm 01Fintech. The new funding will be used to expand into new markets. Thunes, founded in 2016, is set to solve the problems of global inefficiencies in moving money internationally. The company is looking to create a next-generation payment system that is able to make payments instant, quick and secure – just like sending a text message. This would open up more opportunities for businesses and people around the world, allowing them to take advantage of international commerce.
Gensyn | $43M | Series A | 6/11/2023
Gensyn, a provider of blockchain-based computing resources for artificial intelligence platforms (AI), has secured a $43 million, Series A funding round led by a16z. Others joining a16z in the fundraising round include CoinFund, Canonical Crypto, Protocol Labs, and Eden Block, along with several angel investors. Gensyn, founded in 2020 by Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve, is a London based blockchain start-up that is building a cost-efficient and decentralized deep learning and machine learning compute network that allows deep and machine learning models to be trained at an unprecedented scale and efficiency.
Click to see all of June’s funding rounds here:
Hackathons
Upcoming
ETH Barcelona July 7-9
$85K Available in prizes.
Not Another Virtual Hackathon July 6 - September 6
$115,500 Available in prizes. Virtual too!
ETH Global Paris July 21-23
$425,000 Available in prizes.
Seoul Web 3.0 Festival July 31- August 3
₩150 million ($115,000) Available in prizes.
Recently Completed
Fantom Hackathon Q2 2023 July 3
ETH Waterloo June 23-25
ETH Prague June 9-11
Demo Days
Upcoming Demo Days
Outlier ventures Demo Week July 11
Poolside Web3 Accelerator's First Demo Day July 13
Recently Completed Demo Days
IVS Crypto June 28
Mintbase Grants Demo Day June 28
Bitcoin Frontier Demo Day June 27
Web3 Incubation Program by Sony June 18
Odyssey Demo Day June 15
That’s a wrap for June.
In case you missed it, we’ve officially announced Bankless Ventures a $30M early-stage web3 Venture Fund. We’ll continue publishing this newsletter every month!
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Good luck out there!
Ben & Brady
Thanks for the content!
I am unable to access the Airtable data, it is shown as empty.
Great content! Thanks for putting this together