最新报道：Venture capital funding in the crypto industry has shown signs of stagnating in recent months, with some companies struggling to close new financings — a trend highlighted by Sarah Austin, co-founder of Titled Platform, a real-world asset (RWA) platform that raised a $1.3 million seed round earlier this year. Despite the challenging macro environment, “blockchain infrastructure remains the bellwether for crypto,” said Kaden Stadelmann, CTO of Komodo Platform. He noted that key crypto themes that are still attracting investment include AI, decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePINs), tokenization, payments, and RWAs. Several high-profile funding deals in June reflected this continued interest, with decentralized finance (DeFi), trading platforms, pre-seed growth funds, and projects at the intersection of digital assets and AI all receiving funding. The latest VC Roundup takes a closer look at these deals against the backdrop of seasonal volatility that may have limited recent trading. Cryptocurrency exchange Rails has disclosed two rounds of venture funding totaling $20 million, with the most recent round closed in April. The company is building a trading platform that aims to combine the practicality of centralized exchanges with the benefits of decentralized marketplaces. Rails is backed by crypto exchange Kraken, venture capital firm Slow Ventures, blockchain security company Quantstamp, and others. Slow Ventures describes Rails as a "hybrid perpetual exchange that gives professional traders the speed of CEX without giving up custody". Stablecoin payment service provider Beam has completed a $7 million financing to expand its compliance work and network capabilities, aiming to further bridge the gap between digital assets and traditional finance. This round of financing was led by Castle Ventures, with participation from Bankless Ventures, Archetype, Arca, Verda Ventures, and others. Beam provides stablecoin payment rails for fintech companies, banks, and consumer platforms, and has been put into use on Visa Direct, Mastercard Send, and the FedNow system of the US Federal Reserve System. With the latest financing, Beam's total financing has now reached $14 million. The company plans to use the new funds to expand its business in Latin America, Africa, Asia Pacific, and the European Union. Related report: Digital Asset raises $135 million to expand the Canton blockchain network. Xavier Meegan, an executive at former staking provider Chorus One, has launched Frachtis, a $20 million pre-seed fund backed by Theta Capital, RockawayX, and others. The fund will support startup founders building decentralized AI, infrastructure, and consumer applications. Frachtis has already backed eight projects in the pre-seed and seed stages, covering DeFi and AI protocols. Meegan said he is using his experience at Chorus One, where he led more than 40 investments, to identify the next major use cases in blockchain. Web3 developer Inference Labs has raised $6.3 million to build a cryptographic trust layer for AI agents — an area the company believes is underdeveloped, especially with the recent growth in AI tools. The round includes support from DACM, Delphi Ventures, Arche Capital, and Lvna Capital. Inference Labs is developing Proof of Inference, a cryptographic method for verifying AI outputs using zero-knowledge proofs. Zero-knowledge technology has gained traction in the crypto ecosystem for its ability to ensure transaction security and privacy. With the new funding, Inference Labs has launched a testnet for its Proof of Inference, which includes integrations with EigenLayer and Bittensor. The mainnet is scheduled to launch in the third quarter of this year. Gradient Network, a company developing a decentralized AI runtime on Solana, has received $10 million in seed funding from Pantera, Multicoin Capital, and HSG. The funding will support the expansion of Gradient’s decentralized AI infrastructure, one of its core protocols, Lattica, which launched in June. Gradient is also building Parallax, a decentralized inference engine designed to scale large language models and other AI applications. A spokesperson for Gradient Network told Cointelegraph that the company’s choice to build on Solana was a key factor in attracting investment from Pantera and Multicoin Capital. Related: Crypto Biz: AI funding influx could reshape the digital asset industry. Crypto exchange OKX and intellectual property programmable blockchain Story have launched a $10 million ecosystem fund to support startups’ innovation in IP, decentralized IP frameworks, and other applications that treat IP as an asset class. Funds will be distributed via IP tokens (Story’s native token, representing intellectual property on-chain) to support use cases involving real-world IP assets, AI and data licensing, and programmable IP applicationsStory's developer PIP Labs raised $80 million in a Series B round co-led by a16z Crypto and Polychain Capital last August, bringing its total funding to $140 million. Related: VC Roundup: Twenty One Investors Inject $100 Million into BTC Treasury, Jump Crypto Backs Securitize. Blockchain startup Yupp has completed a $33 million seed round led by a16z Crypto, the crypto arm of Andreessen Horowitz, to build an AI evaluation platform powered by blockchain technology. Yupp is developing a platform where users can compare outputs from leading AI models (including ChatGPT, Claude, DeepSeek, Llama, etc.) and receive cryptocurrency rewards for their evaluations. The platform integrates payment services from Coinbase, Stripe, and PayPal. The a16z team describes Yupp as turning "human judgment into a renewable economic resource." Blueprint Finance, a multi-chain DeFi infrastructure developer, has raised another $9.5 million to expand its product suite after launching Concrete, an Ethereum-based yield platform, and Glow Finance, a Solana-based trading and staking platform. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Yzi Labs, VanEck, Bitpanda Ventures, BitGo, Gate Ventures, and others. The financing comes as the DeFi industry recovers from the 2022 bear market. While the total locked value (TVL) on DeFi platforms has rebounded sharply from its lows, it is still below the industry's all-time high three years ago. Units Network, a blockchain ecosystem built on the Waves protocol, has received a $10 million investment led by Nimbus Capital to expand its infrastructure and solve key scalability and decentralization challenges in the Web3 space. The funds will be used to expand validator capacity, enhance cross-chain liquidity rails, and advance Units Network's AI roadmap. Nimbus Capital is an investment firm backed by In On Capital, which manages $1.2 billion in assets. Magazine: Bitcoin 'bull flag' targets $165,000, Pomp acquires $386 million in BTC: Hodler's Digest