seed

ByteDance's Volcano Engine has released the video generation model Seedance 2.5 4K, expanding the previous maximum support of 1080P in Seedance 2.5 to 4K film production. In addition to improving resolution, the new version enhances micro-expressions, subtle movements, and visual details through specialized training.Volcano Engine claims that when referencing generation and video editing, this model can better preserve the clarity, color, and fine text of the original material. Currently, the first batch is only open to 20 film studios and directors worldwide, with approximately 20 works participating in the trial, and the earliest projects are planned to be broadcast on satellite TV in November.

The Zurich-based robotics startup Enact Intelligence announced the completion of a $30 million Pre-seed funding round, with investors including Redalpine, Notion Capital, and Firstminute Capital. This is the largest Pre-seed funding round in Switzerland's history. Yann LeCun and Mistral co-founder Arthur Mensch also participated in the support.The company was co-founded by former employees of 1X and Physical Intelligence, aiming to address one of the biggest bottlenecks in the robotics field.

The stock trading platform Aries announced the completion of a $7 million seed round financing, led by Thomas Peterffy, with participation from Kleiner Perkins, Collision, John Paulson, and 638 users.Aries stated that the company is building a stock trading platform and has launched Aries Infinite. According to its introduction, Aries Infinite is an infinitely scalable trading canvas where users can build components one by one or generate trading interfaces by asking AI questions.

The decentralized data network project Dataline, aimed at AI intelligences, announced the completion of a $10.6 million seed round financing, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.The project also plans to conduct a public token sale through Uniswap's auction platform, with specific details expected to be announced next week, and aims to launch the token by the end of this year.

According to official news, Tether announced that it will lead the Pre-Seed round financing of the Bolivian fintech company Peso, with the specific amount undisclosed.Peso provides global USDT accounts for Latin American users, allowing them to save, spend, invest, and make cross-border remittances through the same app. Peso has integrated USDT payments on the Bolivian digital service platform Yango, enabling users to order takeout directly with USDT; in addition, Peso also offers offline payment services and virtual accounts opened in the user's name, connecting USDT with the Bolivian banking system through QR codes and ACH channels, facilitating the conversion between stablecoins and local fiat currency.This round of funding will be used to expand Peso's local fiat deposit and withdrawal channels in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and Argentina, and to advance its merchant payment network and virtual account infrastructure construction.

According to Sifted, the Dutch startup Photon Bridge announced the completion of a €10 million seed round financing. The company is developing laser technology that can be used for internal connections of AI chips in data centers, aiming to enhance inter-chip connectivity performance.The company claims that its laser technology can be manufactured at scale to meet the rapidly growing demand for AI infrastructure.

The developer of the Bitcoin yield platform HoneyB, Nectar Group, has completed a $5 million seed round financing, led by Portal Ventures, with participation from Peer Venture Partners, Anchorage Digital Ventures, an unnamed family office, and angel investors. Co-founder and CEO Josh Gordon stated that this round of financing uses a Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) plus a one-to-one token warrant structure, with a post-investment valuation of $30 million, and none of the investors received board seats or advisory positions.HoneyB aims to help Bitcoin holders earn yields on their holdings. In its first strategy, users borrow stablecoins using Bitcoin as collateral and then invest them in yield strategies involving U.S. Treasuries, fixed income, credit, gold, volatility, and options. The Bitcoin collateral can be held through on-chain smart contracts or by a tripartite arrangement consisting of borrowers, lenders, and custodians, with Anchorage Digital and BitGo providing custody services. HoneyB has also deployed infrastructure on Ethereum, Sui, Solana, and Arch Network. Gordon stated that the underlying investment products target an annualized return of about 10%, and HoneyB aims to provide users with an annualized return of about 2% to 4% on their Bitcoin holdings after deducting borrowing costs and fees.The first strategy will use a fund under Simplify Asset Management, which manages approximately $13.5 billion in assets, with Alphaledger responsible for managing and tokenizing the fund, and Amber Capital SPC as the issuer. Gordon named Bitwise, Lombard, Solv, and Sentora as competing platforms, noting that HoneyB's differentiation lies in integrating custody, lending, and investment services on the same platform, allowing institutional partners to offer their products under their own brand. HoneyB plans to launch in the fourth quarter of 2026, with its first product aimed at institutional investors outside the U.S., followed by plans to launch institutional products in the U.S. and retail products expected in the first quarter of 2027. Its business model involves charging a platform fee on deployed funds, and this round of funding will be used for product development, custody and financing integration, legal compliance, and distribution. Nectar was established in October last year and currently has more than 12 employees.

Robot AI company Dream Labs announced the completion of a $90 million seed round financing, with investors including B Capital, Kindred Ventures, A.Capital, SV Angel, and Wing VC. The company was founded in 2026 by the former head of the NVIDIA GR00T robotics research team, and the funds will primarily be used for computing power investment, expanding the tasks supported by the model, types of robots, and user scale.Dream Labs also launched Dream API, which can convert robot camera footage and natural language commands into motion control commands. The company claims that its Dream-1 model, through video learning, can adapt to robots from different manufacturers and has already partnered with over 20 hardware partners to support desktop tasks such as object grasping, placement, and folding clothes.

Phoenix Technology reported that on October 19, ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform Volcano Engine launched the Seedance Premium AI Drama Incentive Program, providing financial incentives for premium AI short dramas produced using Seedance and launched on the Hongguo Short Drama App. This program excludes live-action dramas and is only open to AI comics, AI simulated dramas, and other AI-generated forms. The video content of the submitted works must be entirely produced using Seedance, with the usage of Seedance 2.5 accounting for more than 50%, and the generation format through API or tool platforms is not limited.Works must rank within the top 50 AI dramas of the month based on Hongguo's popularity index and pass the review. The applicant can be a company or an individual and must ensure that the information is true and complete. The incentives are divided into three tiers based on monthly rankings: for TOP 1 to TOP 10, 200,000 yuan per work; for TOP 11 to TOP 20, 100,000 yuan per work; for TOP 21 to TOP 50, 50,000 yuan per work. The distribution method is 50% cash plus 50% equivalent vouchers. The vouchers can be chosen by the applicant at the time of registration from three options, including an equivalent Volcano Ark API Token, equivalent "Drama Creation" usage rights, or equivalent "Comic Creation Tool" usage rights. Selected works must cooperate to complete the verification of the work and generation records, and if necessary, submit original generation materials. Those who do not pass the verification or have false declarations will be disqualified from receiving incentives. The deadline for the first phase of the activity is January 31, 2027.

AIsa, an enterprise AI agent infrastructure company, announced the completion of its seed round extension financing, with stablecoin issuer Tether and HIVEN joining as strategic investors. This round brings its total financing amount to over $9 million. Tether and HIVEN join existing investors such as Alibaba, Tribe Capital, Sumitomo Corporation, Draper Associates, and Saison Capital.Jordan Liu, founder and CEO of AIsa, stated that the company will build infrastructure to support global discovery, access, and payment for AI agents. AIsa's network integrates resource discovery, access, and transactions, connecting enterprise AI agents with external data, AI searches, models, APIs, software tools, and industry services, while providing permission management, usage measurement, billing, and settlement.

The intellectual property tokenization platform IPX announced the completion of a $4 million seed round financing, with a valuation of $125 million. This round was led by Bitsurge Holdings, with participation from YICIPX Holdings Family Office and a group of strategic investors. The company is headquartered in Miami, Florida, and the founder and CEO is Brendan McCafferty.IPX's products are built on Base and include an intellectual property agent operating system, a tokenization issuance platform, and IPX Exchange, allowing creators to complete tokenization, advertising, monetization, and distribution within the same system. The company claims that over 100 celebrities have signed exclusive tokenization agreements, covering both existing and new film and television projects in Hollywood, first-tier athlete video games, and YouTube creator membership tokens.The company plans to launch IPXOS, IPX Exchange, and the native token IPX on November 15, 2026, stating that this financing marks the beginning of a series of updates leading up to that launch date, with news on technology, partners, and the first original projects to be released almost weekly thereafter. Brendan McCafferty stated: Creators retain ownership, fans provide funding and share profits, and IPX connects traditional finance with tokenization channels without taking ownership away from creators.

AI insurance startup Harbor AI ended its stealth mode on October 14, announcing the completion of a $10 million seed round financing, led by Base10 Partners, AbstractVC, and 8vc, with participation from RestiveVC, NFX, iEndeavors, Kibo Ventures, DidacLee, MVP Ventures, and others.Harbor AI was co-founded by Elechi, Cristian, Luis, and another co-founder, positioning itself to provide insurance for the agent economy. The company believes that as AI agents take on responsibilities traditionally held by humans, the sources of risk are shifting from human decision-making to machine behavior. Its goal is to make such risks measurable, manageable, and insurable, thereby creating a new category of insurance.

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.

ByteDance Seed recently sent an internal email announcing the establishment of the Seed Model-Alignment & Preparedness department, which will be led by Yan Lin and report to Seed head Wu Yonghui. Members of the original Responsible AI team and some members of the Chat team will transition to the new department.The department aims to strengthen investments in safety and alignment. The core of alignment is to ensure that model behavior is consistent with human intentions and safety constraints, in order to enhance the safety capabilities of Agent Models and prevent risks from cutting-edge capabilities such as chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats.

According to Bloomberg, AI research institution DeepSeek plans to lead the seed round financing for robotics AI startup Winverse AI, with an investment amount reaching tens of millions of dollars. Winverse AI was founded by a former top AI scientist from Tencent and is currently still in a low-profile operational stage.In addition to DeepSeek, investors such as Long-Z Investments, an investment institution under Meituan, also participated in this round of financing, bringing the company's valuation to approximately 400 million dollars. DeepSeek will utilize its over 12 billion dollars in financing funds to support this investment, betting on the rapidly growing field of artificial intelligence and robotics technology. This investment indicates that DeepSeek is further expanding from large model research and development into the field of embodied intelligence and robotics AI.

Robinhood ecosystem AI project Orbio announced the completion of a $1.2 million seed round financing, with participating institutions not yet disclosed. The official statement indicated that this portion of funds will be used to build a track for self-configured computing, hardware, and top-notch private infrastructure.As of the time of publication, according to GMGN market data, the market capitalization of ORBIO tokens is reported at $53.42 million, with a 24-hour increase of 26%. ORBIO was issued on the Pons platform, based on Nvidia stock tokens. Public information shows that the project aims to create a low-cost AI points trading market, offering discounts on points for over 400 AI models, including Claude Fable and GPT Astra. The trading volume of related tokens is small, and price fluctuations are significant, so users should invest cautiously.

AI company Hone announced the launch of Engines, referring to it as AI that is accountable for business outcomes. Hone stated that chatbots provide answers, agents perform tasks, while Engines deliver results and measure the value created in actual dollars, rather than in model token usage or subjective feelings.According to Hone, users only need to specify a business metric, and the Engine will autonomously complete the integration, build the required agents, skills, and memory, collaborate with relevant personnel, and continuously improve with experience. Its clients have used Engines to discover millions of dollars in procurement savings, optimize product conversion funnels, manage credit risk, increase qualified sales pipelines in new regions, and accelerate implementation while improving customer management.Hone also announced the completion of a $60 million seed round financing, led by Benchmark and Index, with participation from Elad Gil, Hanabi, Definition, Diffusion, Lux, SV Angel, and Align. Hone stated that the foundational capabilities of AI have clearly outpaced the value it creates in the real world, and Engines will be used to bridge this gap.

The self-trading agency platform Catalyst announced on October 9 that it has completed a $30 million seed round of financing, led by Sequoia, with participation from Jump, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Selini Capital, Peak XV Partners, SF1, and others. Catalyst stated that the platform can research user ideas, build optimal strategies, monitor events, and autonomously execute trades, having already generated hundreds of millions in trading volume, with a waiting list of tens of thousands.Catalyst claims it is collaborating with Tempo, Privy.io, and others to ensure reliable execution of trades and the safety of funds. The team includes founding engineers from Scale AI, Palantir, HRT, Citadel, and Jump. The platform is currently in a research preview phase, and users can apply for early access through the official website.

Programmable privacy infrastructure Soda Labs has completed a $3 million seed round financing, led by NextBlock. Over the past two and a half years, Soda Labs has developed a cryptographic privacy solution that combines garbled circuits with multi-party computation (GC-MPC), relying on proven standard cryptography such as AES and SHA256. Its privacy engine runs on standard cloud CPUs without the need for dedicated hardware, enabling applications to achieve privacy computing while maintaining a connection to existing public blockchain infrastructure.

According to Fortune, AI trading agent startup Catalyst announced the completion of a $30 million seed round financing, led by Sequoia Capital, with participation from Jump Trading, Peak XV, Lux Capital, AntiFund, Coinbase, and Premji Invest.The company was co-founded by Justin Zheng and Dylan Iskandar in 2025, aiming to assist ordinary investors in formulating and executing trading strategies through AI agents, allowing users to express investment goals in natural language. The AI agent then translates these into trading strategies and completes processes such as asset selection, cost optimization, and trade execution, but the final trades still require user confirmation. It is reported that Catalyst has currently completed a round of testing aimed at high-frequency trading users.