Funding Weekly Report | 11 publicly disclosed funding events; ARQ, a Latin American financial application focused on stablecoins, completed a $70 million funding round.

Highlights of this episode

According to incomplete statistics from PANews, there were 11 investment and financing events in the global blockchain sector last week (March 2-8), with a total funding amount exceeding US$184 million. An overview is as follows:

• In the DeFi sector, three investment and financing events were announced, including QFEX completing a $9.5 million seed round of financing;
• In the Web3+AI sector, one investment and financing event was announced: AI Agent revenue protocol Superpower completed its Pre-Seed round of financing, with Taisu Ventures and others participating.
• Five investment and financing events were announced in the infrastructure & tools sector, including Cyclops completing an $8 million funding round with investors including Castle Island Ventures;
• Two investment and financing events were announced in the centralized finance sector. Among them, digital asset trading company Crossover completed a $31 million Series B financing round, led by Tradeweb.

DeFi

On-chain escrow decentralized protocol OmniPact completes $50 million private funding round

OmniPact, a decentralized protocol that builds a trust layer for peer-to-peer transactions of physical and digital assets, announced the completion of a $50 million private funding round. The investors are a consortium of institutional investors and family offices who requested anonymity. The protocol uses smart contracts as on-chain guarantees to solve the "trust problem" in peer-to-peer transactions. The new funds will support the development of its core contracts and multi-chain infrastructure, as well as related security audits, while also propelling its testnet to launch in the first quarter of 2026.

QFEX completes $9.5 million seed funding round and launches 24/7 high-leverage RWA trading platform

QFEX announced the completion of a $9.5 million seed funding round, led by Yuri Sagalov, partner at General Catalyst, with participation from Paul Graham, Y Combinator, and several other institutions and angel investors, including NexusVP, Moonfire VC, Goodwater Capital, Liquid2V, 468 Capital, and RitualVC. QFEX claims to be the first high-leverage exchange led by a traditional finance team, offering 24/7 trading of traditional assets (RWA), providing investors with up to 50x leverage for trading US stocks, commodities, and forex. Team members come from Citadel, Jump Trading, Optiver, Jane Street, Tower Research Capital, and Flow Traders.

Sats Terminal Receives Strategic Investment from Gate Ventures

Gate.com's venture capital arm, Gate Ventures, announced a strategic investment in Sats Terminal, a Bitcoin-native financial platform. Sats Terminal focuses on providing BTC holders with self-custodied trading, lending, and yield services, aiming to integrate the decentralized Bitcoin DeFi infrastructure into a more user-friendly unified portal and lower the barriers to entry for retail and institutional users.

AI

AI Agent Revenue Protocol Superpower Completes Pre-Seed Funding Round, with Participation from Taisu Ventures and Others.

AI agent revenue-sharing protocol Superpower announced the completion of its Pre-Seed round of financing on the X platform; the amount was not disclosed. Taisu Ventures, 280 Capital, Paper Ventures, and CatcherVC participated in the investment.

AI-powered procurement agency Lio has raised $30 million in Series A funding, led by a16z.

AI-powered procurement agency startup Lio announced the completion of a $30 million Series A funding round, led by Andreessen Horowitz. Lio aims to build virtual procurement teams for large enterprises, taking over the entire process from request submission, price comparison, supplier negotiation, supplier onboarding, to order placement in ERP, email, and contract systems via natural language requests. a16z states that current procurement processes in large global enterprises still heavily rely on email, PDFs, and human collaboration, with procurement transaction volume linearly linked to workforce size, resulting in annual expenditures of hundreds of billions of dollars on procurement personnel. Lio seeks to break this linear relationship through a scalable AI agent, automating traditional back-office procurement work.

(This financing event is not included in this week's weekly report statistics)

Infrastructure & Tools

Cyclops Raises $8 Million in Funding to Advance Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure

Cyclops, a US-based stablecoin infrastructure startup, has raised $8 million in funding from investors including Castle Island Ventures, F-Prime, and payments company Shift4 Payments. Valuation was not disclosed. Cyclops provides stablecoin settlement technology to merchants in sectors such as airlines and hotels, as well as payment companies. It currently partners with merchants using Shift4, such as helicopter travel company Blade and Blue Origin, providing a "technology pipeline" for their 24/7 stablecoin settlements. Founded by Alex Wilson and two others, the company currently has about 20 employees, profits from transaction fees, and plans to further expand its partnerships with payment and card organizations such as Fiserv, Adyen, Global Payments, Visa, Mastercard, and American Express.

Decentralized cloud storage service provider Akave raises $6.65 million in seed funding.

Decentralized cloud storage service provider Akave announced the completion of a $6.65 million funding round, with participation from Protocol Labs, No Limit Holdings, Blockchange, Lightshift, Blockchain Builders Fund, Big Brain Holdings, Avalanche Foundation, and Filecoin Foundation. Akave Cloud is an S3-compatible decentralized storage platform built on the dedicated Avalanche Layer 1 blockchain, designed to provide enterprises with an alternative to traditional cloud storage, enabling AI applications to run without being locked into specific cloud service providers.

Utexo raises $7.5 million in funding, with participation from Tether, Gate Ventures, and others.

Utexo, the Bitcoin USDT infrastructure project, has completed a $7.5 million funding round, with investors including Tether, BigBrainVC, Portal Ventures, and Gate Ventures. Utexo stated that it will drive the native deployment of USDT on the Bitcoin network, claiming that "USDT has finally returned home after more than a decade." This round also attracted participation from several institutions, including Alchemy, FTI Global, Maven11 Capital, and KuCoin Ventures, as well as early participants in projects such as Ledger.

Utexo is a Bitcoin native settlement infrastructure that integrates the RGB protocol with the Lightning Network, enabling private, instant, and non-custodial stablecoin transactions on the Bitcoin network. It directly introduces stablecoin liquidity into the Bitcoin ecosystem and expands decentralized finance application scenarios.

Five Bells, founded by a former NYDIG executive, has completed its seed funding round and is building a "native Bitcoin DvP settlement layer".

Five Bells, co-founded by former NYDIG and Two Sigma executives, has completed its seed round of financing, led by Ego Death Capital, with participation from Epoch VC, Timechain, and Fulgur Ventures.

Five Bells is building what it calls the "first native Bitcoin DvP settlement layer," designed to address counterparty risk in large-scale institutional Bitcoin transactions. Its solution allows both parties to a transaction to pre-lock settlement terms on-chain, locking up BTC in a custodial-like manner, and automatically completing the settlement upon confirmation of fiat wire transfer or stablecoin payment, thereby eliminating operational friction and settlement costs. The solution is based on the Taproot FROST contract, utilizing the Bitcoin network as a neutral and shared anchor of trust. The company plans to officially launch the service to clients after completing final testing and auditing.

Interstate, an Ethereum-based pre-confirmation network, raises $1.5 million in funding.

Interstate, an Ethereum-based preconfirmation network, has raised $1.5 million in funding. Participants included Marshland Capital, Taisu Ventures, Bloccelerate, Alpen Labs, GD1, MH Ventures, Alchemy Ventures, Legends Group, Waikik Lau, and Sergey Gorbunov. Interstate is a cryptocurrency-focused company dedicated to improving the Ethereum user experience by reducing transaction confirmation times. Their preconfirmation network allows users to receive transaction confirmations in approximately 100 milliseconds, exceeding the standard 12-second block time of Ethereum.

Centralized Finance

ARQ, a financial application focused on stablecoins, has raised $70 million in funding, with Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund participating.

ARQ, a Latin American financial application focused on stablecoins, has raised $70 million in funding, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. The funds will be used for rebranding, hiring new employees, and expanding services beyond USD-denominated transfers to include wealth management, local currency high-yield accounts, and lending.

ARQ, formerly known as DolarApp, offers services such as multi-currency accounts, digital wallets, foreign exchange, and debit cards, helping users store and transfer funds across borders. It has over 2 million customers in Latin America and annualized transaction volume exceeding $10 billion. ARQ states that it has built the infrastructure connecting traditional banking networks and stablecoin-based payment systems, enabling users to hold foreign currency and conduct transactions.

Digital asset trading company Crossover has raised $31 million in Series B funding, led by Tradeweb.

Fixed-income trading giant Tradeweb Markets led a $31 million Series B funding round for digital asset trading firm Crossover Markets Group, with participation from DRW Venture Capital, Ripple, Virtu Financial, Windemute Ventures, XTX Markets, and Illuminate Financial. The deal values ​​Crossover at approximately $200 million. As part of the deal, Tradeweb will leverage its algorithmic technology to route crypto orders from institutional clients through its platform, providing them with direct access to the digital asset space.

Founded in 2022 by forex market veterans from Jefferies and Euronext FX, Crossover's CROSSx platform uses an ECN model that separates trade execution from custody and credit, and has matched over $50 billion in notional trading volume since its launch.

other

Robotics company Neura Robotics has secured approximately €1 billion in funding led by Tether, valuing the company at €4 billion.

German humanoid robot startup Neura Robotics is raising approximately €1 billion in funding, with stablecoin issuer Tether Holdings participating in the round, valuing the company at around €4 billion post-money. Sources familiar with the matter say the company may continue to raise funds after this round. Neura Robotics focuses on AI-driven humanoid robots, showcasing its products on its website for use in automotive assembly lines and household chores. The company currently sells factory transport robots and home robotic arms. CEO David Reger previously stated that the company's order volume last year approached $1 billion, with customers including Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries and Omron.

(This financing event is not included in this week's weekly report statistics)