fund

Early-stage venture capital firm Pear VC co-founder Pejman Nozad announced the fifth fund, Pear Fund V, with Mar on October 14, 2026, with a scale of $333 million, bringing Pear's managed assets to over $1.1 billion. Arash Afrakhteh, Ajay Kamat, and Shravan Reddy were appointed as general partners at the same time. The two discussed founding a venture capital firm about 13 years ago at Coupa Café in Palo Alto, believing in meeting founders before they are recognized as exceptional by the outside world.Pear has supported DoorDash, Gusto, Guardant Health, Vanta, and Listen Labs, seeing thousands of opportunities each year through pre-seed and seed-stage businesses, and has built PearX, university programs, hackathons, a founder community, two studios, an engineering team, and a founder services team. Arash Afrakhteh joined in 2020, investing in enterprise and B2B, covering artificial intelligence, machine learning, cloud, and data infrastructure, and co-founded Cariden Technologies, which was acquired by Cisco in 2012.Ajay Kamat joined in 2015, investing in consumer, fintech, and healthcare, and co-founded Wedding Party, serving as CEO. The company was supported by Pear and later acquired by Instacart.

Cathie Wood posted on the X platform that the ARK Venture Fund has launched on-chain through Securitize, with the fund's portfolio, liquidity, and minimum investment threshold remaining unchanged.She stated that based on ARK's research, tokenization has the potential to fundamentally change the way investors participate in private and public financial markets; the on-chain launch of the ARK Venture Fund is an extension of its mission to expand investor access to technology-driven innovation opportunities.

Bitcoin News posted on platform X that the White House is exploring acquiring Bitcoin through existing federal government funding to expand the United States' strategic Bitcoin reserves. Patrick Witt, the Executive Director of the President's Advisory Council on Digital Assets, told Lark Davis that purchasing Bitcoin on the open market requires congressional authorization, and the government is currently researching ways to receive or convert existing federal funds into Bitcoin.The plan aims to follow President Trump's executive order to expand the United States' strategic Bitcoin reserves without increasing taxpayer spending.

The Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission has completed the rule-making for Bitcoin ETFs, and the new regulations will take effect on October 16. Bitcoin has been included as a qualified asset in the first phase.According to the rules, the average net exposure of the relevant funds for each accounting year must reach at least 80% of the net asset value. The custodian must be licensed by the Thailand Securities and Exchange Commission, and fund shares can only be traded on the Thailand Stock Exchange. Securities companies are not allowed to provide margin financing. Thai mutual funds and private funds will be permitted to invest in locally listed cryptocurrency ETFs, but initially, the issuance and provision of depositary receipts related to overseas cryptocurrency ETFs are prohibited.

Mark Newton, an analyst at Tom Lee's fund, stated in an interview that he expects global stock markets to consolidate in the short term before experiencing a stronger rally; the global stock market is expected to perform well from November to April, while a weakening dollar will also benefit emerging markets. Mark Newton believes that now is not the time to panic, and the pullback from mid to late October to November could create the best buying opportunity of this cycle.

CoreWeave, an AI cloud service provider supported by NVIDIA, is seeking to attract funding from insurance companies to reduce the financing costs of purchasing AI chips and building infrastructure. Co-founder Branning McBee stated that the company plans to raise funds through methods such as chip-backed loans, with financing exceeding $35 billion this year.

Recently, the police in Binhai City, Shandong, China received a report from a citizen named Xie, stating that 1,300 USDC stablecoins and NFTs worth tens of thousands of yuan had mysteriously disappeared from his digital wallet. There were no obvious transfer alerts or signs of phishing links in the wallet. The police began an on-chain investigation into the virtual currency transfer records and actively sought cooperation with enterprises to analyze the suspect's account.After extensive work, a major suspect named Chen (30 years old, from Fengyang County, Chuzhou, Anhui) was identified. On October 9, technical police officers went to Fengyang County to arrest him. Upon arrival, Chen initially denied the allegations. However, the police utilized the immutable and traceable characteristics of blockchain evidence to gradually break down his psychological defenses. Chen ultimately confessed to the theft. Chen has now been criminally detained in accordance with the law, and his family has actively compensated the victim for the losses. This case marks the first instance of virtual currency theft in Binhai City.

Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev stated on the X platform yesterday, "We hope that Robinhood will have the best builders on-chain, and we are investing to make this a reality. More details will be announced soon." This news subsequently continued to ferment within the community, with crypto KOL @rickytheirish claiming that the Robinhood chain will launch a funding program exceeding $100 million, aimed at ecological builders.According to GMGN market data, possibly influenced by the above news, the Robinhood chain's ecological tokens experienced a rebound: PONS is currently priced at $0.324, with a 24-hour increase of 16.4%; Artificial Inu is currently priced at $0.101, with a 24-hour increase of 20.7%; BUN is currently priced at $0.0563, with a 24-hour increase of 17.38%; some small-cap varieties, including PRIORS and Index, also showed significant rebounds. ChainCatcher reminds users that the related rumors have not been officially confirmed, and the prices of on-chain tokens are highly volatile, so users should invest cautiously.

According to a report by The Paper, the case of Qian Zhimin, involving over 40 billion yuan in illegal fundraising and more than 60,000 bitcoins, has seen new developments in domestic judicial procedures. The Tianjin Second Intermediate People's Court announced that it has accepted the Tianjin People's Procuratorate Second Branch's application to confiscate the illegal gains of the suspect Qian Zhimin as of September 28.According to the property confiscation list published by the Tianjin Second Intermediate Court, in addition to bitcoins, the involved virtual currencies also include 72,745.79502 bitcoins cash, 72,745.78555 bitcoins gold, 72,745.7845 bitcoins Satoshi Vision, 3,605,989.9995 ripples, and 70,081,208.62553222 dogecoins (which have been converted and deposited into an interest-bearing account by British judicial authorities). Additionally, the confiscated assets also include cash in US dollars, euros, and British pounds, jewelry, as well as bank balances and investment portfolios.The Tianjin People's Procuratorate Second Branch believes that Qian Zhimin is suspected of fundraising fraud, and after fleeing, he has been wanted for a year without appearing in court. There is evidence proving that over 61,800 bitcoins and other assets seized in the UK belong to illegal gains and their proceeds, and should be recovered along with the transformed and converted properties and proceeds, except for those legally returned to the harmed fundraising participants, which should be confiscated.

Dework founder Lonis Hamaili announced on X the launch of the AI hedge fund Cambrian, with seed funding of approximately 70 million USD. The fund's supporters include the Japanese listed company Metaplanet and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn.Lonis Hamaili also stated: General artificial intelligence is on the way, and the current trading multiples of hundreds of AI supply chain oligarchs are only 1 to 5 times revenue and 5 to 15 times profit. He believes that the shorter AI development timeline may weaken the moat in the software field, but key bottlenecks in physical processes still exist.

According to CoinDesk, asset management company Federated Hermes, with a management scale of 911 billion dollars, plans to launch its first batch of on-chain fund shares early next year, further participating in Wall Street's push to bring traditional assets on-chain.Federated Hermes has partnered with digital securities infrastructure company Prometheum to introduce blockchain-based fund shares into traditional brokerage accounts and financial advisor channels. The company has not yet disclosed the specific types of tokenized funds and the blockchain network used, but its head of digital asset products and platforms, Kevin Barr, stated that money market funds may become the first tokenized products.

The Hyperliquid Assistance Fund has accumulated over 48 million HYPE tokens, with a total expenditure of approximately 1.365 billion USD. Currently, the market value of these tokens has risen to about 3.953 billion USD.The Hyperliquid Assistance Fund primarily continues to repurchase HYPE from the open market through protocol trading fee income, serving as the core mechanism for returning value to token holders. Recently, Hyperliquid has also injected part of the USDC reserve earnings into the Assistance Fund through the AQAv2 framework to further expand the sources of repurchase funds, making the repurchase no longer completely reliant on trading fees.

According to Bloomberg, European venture capital firm Sprints has completed the fundraising for its fifth fund, totaling 725 million euros (approximately 810 million dollars). Henrik Persson, co-founder and managing partner of the firm, stated that the fundraising took about a year, and more than half of the funds have already been deployed for investments in new companies and the existing portfolio, with investors including endowment funds, foundations, pension funds, and family offices.Sprints made early investments in Revolut and is the largest shareholder of the second-hand trading app Vinted, as well as investing in Flightradar24 and payment company Checkout.com. Its invested AI customer service company Fin was acquired by Salesforce this year for 3.6 billion dollars. Persson mentioned that the firm has not invested in any foundational AI companies, as most of these companies have not yet developed a business model.

Catherine Chen, the head of VIP and institutional business at Binance, stated in an interview with The Block during Token2049 that traditional hedge funds, which previously took a wait-and-see approach, are now showing a stronger interest due to the emergence of arbitrage opportunities related to traditional financial instruments such as cash stocks and perpetual contracts on crypto platforms.She pointed out that the improvement in market depth, combined with 24/7 trading and weekend price discovery mechanisms, makes these opportunities more realistic. She also mentioned that when the same tools are offered on second- and third-tier platforms or in DeFi venues, liquidity often falls short of hedge funds' needs. However, she emphasized that this process is still in its early stages and does not expect a surge in capital inflows overnight, with the next 12 to 18 months being worth close attention.Similar changes are happening on the other side of the market. Chen indicated that their crypto-native clients are incorporating more tools linked to traditional financial products to build hybrid investment portfolios. The data she cited showed that the scale of Binance's cash stock assets has increased from about $800 million to $900 million to $1.4 billion, while the trading volume of traditional financial perpetual contracts has risen from about $20 billion to $30 billion per month when launched at the beginning of this year to about $400 billion every 30 days. She believes that tokenization and cross-asset trading are still in their early stages, and regulatory clarity will determine the ultimate integration of traditional and crypto trading more than the product offerings of a single platform.

According to Bitcoin News, the Bitcoin Lightning Network development kit LDK has fixed multiple security vulnerabilities, including a channel reconnection vulnerability that could be exploited by malicious counterparties, leading to the theft of funds. The LDK official released versions 0.1.13, 0.2.7, and 0.3-rc3 on October 3, recommending operators interacting with untrusted channel counterparties in production environments to upgrade. Currently, the related disclosures have not confirmed any actual losses caused by these vulnerabilities.

According to the Miner Weekly briefing published by BlocksBridge Consulting, Bitcoin mining companies expanding into the fields of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing are facing significantly different borrowing costs, with lenders increasingly scrutinizing large data center projects. The briefing points out that securing large AI clients is only part of the challenge; mining companies also need to raise billions of dollars to purchase computing power equipment, build data centers, and ensure the power infrastructure required for contract fulfillment. BlocksBridge indicates that large lending institutions have become more selective about data center loans, with decisions increasingly depending on client qualifications, contract terms, and project completion paths.The transition from Bitcoin mining to AI infrastructure by IREN reflects the differences in financing costs: the company secured $3.65 billion in GPU financing in June at a blended interest rate of 6%; in August, it completed another $2.4 billion financing with a fixed interest rate of 9%. The two agreements correspond to different projects and are not directly comparable, but they show that even within the same company, borrowing costs can vary significantly. Financing arrangements may also incur costs beyond interest; in another transaction involving Cipher Digital, Google guaranteed a $1.4 billion lease obligation in exchange for warrants representing a 5.4% equity stake in Cipher, with exercising the warrants potentially diluting existing shareholder equity.The rise in financing demand highlights the overall challenges mining companies face in entering the AI market. Data from VanEck shows that during the peak of the Bitcoin bull market in October last year, mining company debt surged by approximately 500% compared to the second quarter of 2024.

According to Bitcoin News monitoring, the Lightning Development Kit (LDK) has released a security update that fixes vulnerabilities that could allow malicious nodes to steal funds. The most serious vulnerability involves Lightning channel reconnections. According to Bitcoin Optech, malicious nodes may falsely claim that they did not receive previously confirmed channel updates.The vulnerable LDK software could subsequently sign conflicting commitment transactions without properly recording the related transactions, allowing attackers to regain Bitcoin after forwarding the payment is completed. Versions LDK 0.2.7 and 0.1.13 have fixed this vulnerability. As of the reviewed disclosure information, no confirmed losses caused by these specific vulnerabilities have been found.

According to The Block, the UK Bitcoin treasury company The Smarter Web Company is conditionally raising £10 million (approximately $13.2 million) through a preferred stock issuance. Of this, £4 million (approximately $5.3 million) in net proceeds will be used to increase its Bitcoin holdings.This batch of preferred shares is expected to start trading in London on October 14, with an initial annual dividend yield of 12%, paid weekly.

The Financial Services Commission of South Korea is promoting the expansion of the tokenized securities market from fragmented investments in real estate and art to the fields of bonds and funds. The relevant amendments to the Electronic Securities Act and the Capital Markets Act have been legislatively announced from the 2nd of this month until the 11th of next month, with the supporting regulations officially implemented on February 4th next year, to refine the rules for issuance and circulation.The amendments clearly include traditional securities such as stocks, bonds, and funds within the scope of tokenization, initially prioritizing the launch of private currency funds, private bonds, and non-listed stock tokenization based on trusts for institutional investors, while piloting public fragmented investment securities; public bonds and funds for ordinary investors will be expanded after market stabilization. Meanwhile, regulators plan to set an annual net purchase limit of 100 million Korean Won for ordinary investors on over-the-counter trading platforms and allow non-financial institutions to directly manage investor accounts after meeting conditions such as having 4 billion Korean Won in their own capital.

In 2025, there were approximately 20 financing rounds in the domestic tactile sensor sector, with a total disclosed amount nearing 1.8 billion yuan. According to data from the Financial Association, in the first seven months of 2026, there were 15 financing rounds completed in the humanoid robot sensor field, totaling 3.1 billion yuan, with July alone accounting for 1.56 billion yuan. Related estimates indicate that the global tactile sensor market size will be around 6 billion yuan in 2026 and approximately 29 billion yuan in 2030.The tactile sensor company, PaxiNi, was founded by Xu Jincheng and Nie Xiangru in June 2021 in Shenzhen, with the Hall array sensor PX-6AX GEN3 starting at a price of 199 yuan. The company completed over 1 billion yuan in Series B financing in March, with a valuation exceeding 10 billion yuan, followed by 1 billion yuan in strategic financing in August and several hundred million yuan in B++ financing in September, accumulating over 4 billion yuan in total financing, with BYD as the largest external shareholder. On September 20, PaxiNi completed its counseling filing with the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau, with Guotai Junan as the counseling institution.The tactile perception chip company, Tashan Technology, was founded by Ma Yang, Sun Tengchen, and Yang Wuqiang in December 2017, with revenue exceeding 100 million yuan in 2024, and was listed by NVIDIA as the world's first tactile simulation partner for Isaac Sim. Qianjue Robotics was founded by Ma Daolin in May 2024, with Hillhouse Capital having led the angel round, and in September of this year, it completed two rounds of strategic financing totaling several hundred million yuan. Companies such as Daimeng, Weitai, Xiangmuguo, Yimu Technology, and Lingxin Qiaoshou also secured new financing or advanced higher valuation financing in 2026.