venture

According to Crypto Briefing, Compound managing partner Michael Dempsey stated in an Empire podcast interview on October 13, 2026, that crypto venture capital has been sluggish for nearly two years, approaching a standstill, a stagnation that can be traced back to 2024. He believes that developers who once chased the crypto space have now turned to artificial intelligence, and funding has followed suit into AI.Dempsey compared the current situation to 2021, when tech entrepreneurs flocked to the crypto space. He pointed out that the entire tech industry’s attention is almost entirely focused on AI, leading talent and capital to flow from crypto projects to AI. Additionally, Dempsey mentioned structural issues with token incentives, acknowledging that tokenization has real potential, but achieving long-term alignment of interests with token incentives is challenging.

Investment firm Compound Managing Partner Michael Dempsey stated in an interview with Empire on October 13 that crypto venture capital has nearly stagnated over the past two years. He noted that compared to 2021, when a large number of tech entrepreneurs turned to the crypto industry, the entire tech sector is now attracted by AI, and fewer people are willing to engage in crypto entrepreneurship.Dempsey believes the industry needs to address talent loss and token incentive issues. While tokenization has its benefits, it is not conducive to long-term incentives. Regarding investment opportunities, he pointed out that some tokens that have been distributed are beginning to show real value, and analysis can be conducted based on fundamentals rather than just narratives. In contrast, in the primary market, aside from new perpetual contract DEX projects, there are not many entrepreneurs willing to explore new directions.

Eskender Abebe announced his joining the early-stage crypto venture capital firm Archetype as Chief Product Officer. Archetype confirmed that he is the first Chief Product Officer of the firm. According to him, he will be responsible for building internal platforms and tools at Archetype, bringing a product perspective into the investment process, and working directly with early founders to help accelerate their progress. Eskender Abebe previously served as Chief Product Officer at Eliza Labs, the maintainer of the open-source AI framework elizaOS, and earlier held positions as the product lead for ENS and a senior technical product manager at Consensys.Eskender Abebe stated that he has been working at the intersection of crypto and AI for the past few years. He believes that crypto allows capital to be programmed, distributed, and coordinated without central institutions, while AI enables intelligence to be programmed, distributed, and coordinated without central institutions. He also mentioned that the experience in ownership, incentives, and open coordination in crypto will play a core role in the interactions and transactions of autonomous AI systems, and together they will change the upper limits of ideas that individuals and small teams can pursue.Regarding his responsibilities and reasons for joining, Eskender Abebe said that if the company structure changes, the supporting institutions should also adjust. He stated that excellent venture capital firms are always built on judgment, relationships, and beliefs, which do not change, but the products built around them can change, including tools, systems, and practical experiences used to support founders and allow them to focus on building. He also mentioned that he joined Archetype because he recognizes the team's judgment criteria and the depth of collaboration between the team and the founders and their ideas.

Quantum computing company Q-Ctrl announced the completion of a $290 million financing round, led by Salesforce Ventures, with participation from existing investors such as the CIA's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, Lockheed Martin Ventures, as well as new investors including Jared Kushner's Affinity Partners, AMD Ventures, and the UAE defense group Edge Group.The company's valuation exceeds $1 billion, and it primarily develops quantum sensing and quantum computing software to enhance the stability of quantum computers and reduce computational errors, with future applications expected in fields such as healthcare, finance, and energy.

According to on-chain analyst Yu Jin's monitoring, crypto VC Strobe Ventures transferred the last 50 million ENA to Coinbase one hour ago, completing their liquidation. The address (0x3C7...0f54) transferred a total of 101.95 million ENA to Coinbase within a day, worth approximately 15.6 million USD.Strobe Ventures has sold all 142.9 million ENA acquired through investments, with a total sale value of approximately 32.95 million USD, at an average price of about 0.23 USD.

According to The Block, OKX and the New York Stock Exchange's parent company Intercontinental Exchange's joint venture OKXICE plan to launch a tokenized securities trading platform on November 23, applicable to the five-year innovation exemption from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).The two companies stated that they have currently confirmed 70 assets from issuers such as Coinbase, Circle, and Robinhood, as well as 59 exchange-traded funds. U.S. customers who complete the account opening process and hold a CeDeFi wallet can use the platform.The report noted that as of the documents dated November 5, 67 companies have chosen not to allow their stocks to be traded in a tokenized manner on the platform, including Meta, Tesla, and Netflix.

According to official news, Animoca Brands' digital identity project Moca Network announced a strategic cooperation with OKX Ventures, and both parties will jointly screen and support Moca Network ecosystem projects. OKX Ventures has committed to allocating part of its MOCA token reserves for joint investments in projects that develop consumer applications based on digital identity infrastructure such as AIR Kit and Moca Chain.OKX Ventures will also provide support for selected projects, including OKX payment, fiat deposit, and OKX Wallet integration. As the projects gradually mature, Animoca Brands and OKX Ventures may also increase their investments.

According to Fortune magazine, Layer 1 blockchain development company Alta, aimed at banks and large financial institutions, announced on Tuesday the completion of a $47.5 million Series A funding round, but did not disclose the company's valuation. This round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, and Capital49.Previously, the company had completed a $32.5 million seed funding round, primarily supported by Australian fintech giant Airwallex. Airwallex is currently competing in the global payments market with companies like Stripe.Alta's CEO Loong Wang previously founded a cryptocurrency startup, which he sold in 2021, and then turned to a second startup that uses quantum computing technology to assist in drug development. After that, Wang returned to the cryptocurrency field and co-founded Alta with former Meta executive Catherine Porter. The company was recently renamed from its original name Metal. Porter was involved in Meta's later abandoned cryptocurrency business.In an interview, Wang stated that despite the presence of many so-called Layer 1 blockchains in the market, he still decided to develop a new blockchain because he believes it is the best technology for transferring funds. He also pointed out that existing blockchains do not provide a complete set of privacy protection and compliance tools specifically designed for banks and other large financial institutions.

According to a report by Yicai, the "2026 Corporate AI Status Report" released by Silicon Valley venture capital firm Menlo Ventures shows that 89% of the spending by American companies on open-source models went to Chinese models, with Kimi accounting for 61%, DeepSeek for 15%, and GLM for 11%.In addition, on the global AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter, from October 26 to November 1, the number of Token calls for Chinese large models has exceeded that of American models for 27 consecutive weeks, with Chinese models occupying four of the top five models in terms of platform call volume that week.

According to PR Newswire, the Latin American stablecoin financial platform Takenos has completed an additional $7 million in seed funding, led by North Island Ventures and Road Capital Management, with participation from existing investors Variant, Lattice, and Reverie. This round of financing brings Takenos' total funding to $12 million.Founded in 2022, Takenos currently operates in six countries in Latin America, processing over $5 billion in transactions annually, with clients including global companies such as LATAM Airlines. The platform has developed a complete technology stack covering local payment rails, consumer applications, enterprise APIs, and institutional trading desks, with partners including Stripe, Mastercard, and Visa. The new funds will be used to expand services to more than 15 countries by 2027.

According to official news, the tokenized securities financing infrastructure Lombard Systems (formerly SemiLiquid) has completed a $4 million seed round financing, led by Ethereal Ventures, with participation from ALPS Capital, First Commit, Veris Ventures, and ATKA.Lombard Systems provides financing infrastructure for tokenized securities and maintains the "Delivery versus Lock" (DvL) standard. This standard allows banks, brokers, and transfer agents to accept tokenized and digital assets as collateral without moving the assets out of their original securities accounts, with the assets still locked in the owner's name. Lenders obtain enforceable secured interests evidenced by cryptographic signature credit certificates.

According to LatePost, Yang Tianzhen, the founder of Yixin Entertainment, and Jiang Shanshan, the former head of Alibaba's Frontier Technology Investment, jointly established a venture capital firm, Helios Venture, focusing on cutting-edge technologies such as AI, embodied intelligence, nuclear fusion, and brain-computer interfaces. The two have clear divisions of labor, with Jiang Shanshan responsible for investments and Yang Tianzhen handling investor relations, content, and brand building.Jiang Shanshan previously served as the Managing Director of Alibaba's Strategic Investment Department. In the past three years, she led investments in over a dozen cutting-edge technology projects at Alibaba, with a total investment amount exceeding 10 billion RMB, including projects like The Dark Side of the Moon, the robotics company Sharpa, and the nuclear fusion company Nova Fusion. In August of this year, she left Alibaba and began preparing her own fund. Their collaboration originated from Jiang Shanshan seeking advice from Yang Tianzhen on how to establish influence for the new fund, leading Yang Tianzhen to propose a joint venture.Jiang Shanshan believes that after leaving Alibaba, the new fund must establish its own brand to compete with top institutions for quality startup projects. Yang Tianzhen will leverage her experience in talent management and content marketing to connect with entrepreneurs and provide support for brand communication and founder image management for the invested companies. The two also plan to jointly produce a technology podcast aimed at the general public. Jiang Shanshan summarizes their collaboration logic as investment capability being 1, with content being the subsequent 0. In terms of investment strategy, she prefers selective heavy investments and mentioned that she had reviewed hundreds of AI application companies without making any investments, believing that consumer-facing AI productivity tools and entertainment applications will likely be dominated by large companies or model companies in the future, while there may be more independent entrepreneurial opportunities in complex fields like enterprise-level AI agent infrastructure.

According to PR Newswire, AI intelligence data security company Sentra announced the completion of a $150 million Series C financing round, led by Capital One Ventures, with participation from existing shareholders including Bessemer Venture Partners, Zeev Ventures, Standard Investments, Munich Re Ventures, and Key1 Capital. Capital One will send a representative to join the board.Sentra stated that it has experienced over 300% year-on-year growth in the past year, and the new funds will be used to expand AI intelligence data access control and static data protection capabilities, as well as to explore new markets. Sentra's total financing has exceeded $250 million.

The cybersecurity venture capital firm Ballistic Ventures is seeking to raise a total of $490 million for two new funds, with neither fund recording sales at the time of filing.

Gate Ventures Weekly Report statistics show that 13 financing deals were disclosed last week, with a total disclosed amount of approximately 1.375 billion USD, among which Kalshi raised 1 billion USD.

Meme token and AI Agent issuance platform Bullshot announced the completion of a $7.7 million financing round, co-led by P2 Ventures and Animoca Brands, with participation from B1 Ventures, Poolz Ventures, Genesis Capital, and other institutions.

AI reading knowledge network Readora announced the completion of a $6.5 million financing round, with investors including Becker Ventures, GaeaVentures, and Aurumx Capital.Readora is committed to transforming reading behavior into accumulable and reusable intelligent value through AI reading assistance, personalized information discovery, and attention incentives. Currently, Readora's products support BNB Chain (BSC) and Morph, continuously improving the product experience around AI content understanding, intelligent discovery, and reading incentives.As AI technology accelerates its integration into information acquisition and knowledge management, how to efficiently discover valuable information from vast amounts of content and enable users' attention to create long-term value is becoming a new development direction. Readora will continue to promote the construction of AI reading and intelligent discovery capabilities, expand ecological cooperation, and explore more possibilities for the integration of human attention and AI networks.

On October 31, Kyle Harrison, a general partner at the venture capital firm Contrary, stated that venture capital is experiencing a McDonaldization, where efficiency, measurability, predictability, and control lead to outcomes that are not intended by all parties. He believes the symptoms are scale combined with consensus, and the industry has split into different forms that share the same name. Harrison previously worked at Index Ventures, Coatue, and TCV, and founded the research platform Contrary Research. The article was published on the same day in his column.He cited PitchBook data indicating that in the first three quarters of 2026, a16z has raised $23.8 billion, accounting for over 20% of U.S. venture capital fundraising during the same period. During this time, U.S. venture capital funds raised a total of $108.5 billion, which is about 39% higher than the total for 2025. The number of first-time funds decreased from 479 in 2022 to 195 in 2025, with 81 so far this year; funds in their fourth round and beyond accounted for 88.2% of all fundraising, the highest share recorded by PitchBook.Harrison also wrote that the proportion of U.S. venture capital funding attributed to artificial intelligence rose from 39% in 2023 to 51% in 2024, 65% in 2025, and 82.7% so far in 2026. In the first quarter of this year, five companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Waymo, and Databricks—captured 73.2% of U.S. deal value. Since 2023, non-AI venture capital in the U.S. has roughly maintained an annual range of $100 billion to $120 billion. He stated that once fund size dominates decision-making, every deal must fit the fund's scale.

According to official news, the on-chain interest rate trading and hedging exchange Rates Exchange announced that it has received investment from Coinbase Ventures, with the amount undisclosed.It is reported that Rates Exchange is an on-chain order book trading platform for trading and hedging interest rates. The platform currently offers interest rate swaps and plans to launch calculation swaps, foreign exchange swaps, and fixed-rate equity options.

Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group will invest approximately 5% in the joint venture SBI Startale Marketing, a collaboration between SBI Holdings and Startale Group, with the related investment to be completed soon. Sumitomo Mitsui FG and SBI are developing capital business partnerships, intending to leverage their customer base to develop financial services using the yen stablecoin JPYSC for asset management and payment scenarios.The joint venture is responsible for the planning of JPYSC applications and the development of blockchain financial products. After Sumitomo Mitsui FG's participation, the circulation and usage will further expand. JPYSC is issued by SBI Shinsei Trust Bank, with SBI VC Trade responsible for its circulation. It is a trust-type yen stablecoin that started offering on June 24, with an issuance balance of approximately 20.8 billion yen. Sumitomo Mitsui Bank has about 24 million individual customers and may consider using JPYSC for blockchain financial product settlements and instant settlements in the future.Sumitomo Mitsui Bank is also advancing the joint issuance of stablecoins with Mitsubishi UFJ, Mizuho, and others, and has announced empirical experiments to confirm the feasibility of the joint issuance model.