Odaily News Artificial intelligence laboratory Harmonic announced the completion of a $100 million Series B financing round, led by Kleiner Perkins, with participation from Paradigm, Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital, Index Ventures and Charlie Cheever, with a post-investment valuation of $900 million. Harmonic is currently building software verification and code verification capabilities based on mathematical super intelligence (MSI), which are mainly used in industries such as blockchain and financial services. The company raised $75 million in its Series A financing last September.

Odaily News Crypto infrastructure company Turnkey announced the completion of a $30 million Series B funding round, aiming to build an “open crypto infrastructure layer” to drive the industry to evolve like the Internet. This round of financing was led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Galaxy Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Variant and Wintermute Ventures. After this round of financing, Turnkey's total cumulative financing has reached US$50 million. Turnkey was founded in 2022 by members of the original Coinbase Custody team. It focuses on wallet infrastructure services and provides embedded wallets that do not require mnemonics. Its customers include prediction market platform Polymarket, NFT market Magic Eden, and Web3 development platform Alchemy. “We are still in the early stages, with less than 10% of the world’s population using cryptocurrency, and the current infrastructure reflects that,” said Turnkey co-founder. “But the foundations laid today will shape digital finance for the next decade.” According to Market Research Future, the blockchain infrastructure market will be worth $27.4 billion by 2025 and will grow to $221.4 billion in 2034, with a compound annual growth rate of 26.1%. In March this year, Turnkey's competitor Privy also announced the completion of financing, with a total financing amount of US$40 million, and also provides integrated white label wallet solutions. As crypto assets are accepted by the mainstream, the underlying infrastructure has become the focus of a new round of funds. (Cointelegraph)

Odaily News Sahara AI, a decentralized AI blockchain platform, announced that it will launch the SIWA public testnet on May 19, marking an important milestone in its transition from closed testing to public testing. It is reported that the SIWA testnet is the last testing phase before the mainnet token generation event (TGE), and participants have the opportunity to earn bonus points through tasks such as data annotation and model verification. Sahara AI is committed to enabling on-chain management, licensing, and ownership of AI assets through blockchain technology, ensuring transparency and fair compensation for data and models. Previously, Sahara AI has completed a $43 million Series A financing led by Pantera Capital, Binance Labs and Polychain Capital, with participation from Samsung NEXT, Sequoia Capital, etc. The funds will be used to expand the team, optimize platform performance and accelerate the construction of the developer ecosystem.

Odaily News TON Foundation said that venture capital firms such as Sequoia Capital, Ribbit, Benchmark and Kingsway have invested more than $400 million by purchasing Toncoin cryptocurrency. In addition, investors such as Vy Capital, Draper Associates and Libertus Capital also participated in this round of investment. A spokesperson for TON Foundation said: "These venture capital firms invested through Toncoin, rather than through traditional equity or cash." In the past year, the TON blockchain has more than 40 million active users, and the number of "independent" holders of Toncoin has reached 121 million. (The Block)

Odaily星球日报讯 机构级加密货币交易所 EDX Markets 已将其首席技术官（CTO） Tony Acuña-Rohter 提拔为首席执行官。创始首席执行官 Jamil Nazarali 成为执行董事长。 Acuña-Rohter 此前在 CME Group 工作了十年，之后成为数字资产期货平台 ErisX 的首席技术官，ErisX 后来被 CME 收购。因此，他在即将在亚洲推出的永续期货平台中发挥着关键作用。与此同时，Nazarali 在担任 EDX Markets 首席执行官之前，曾负责 Citadel Securities 的业务开发。 5 月，该公司在新加坡推出了 EDXM Global，以处理非美国业务，首先是结算平台。2025 年第一季度，该公司计划推出加密永续期货交易，最初支持 BTC 和 ETH，之后几个月内新增 SOL 和 XRP 等。永续期货交易场所将设在东京的 Equinix TY3 数据中心。与在岸交易所一样，EDXM Global 将受益于中央清算所和净结算。EDXM Global 由来自 Zodia Custody 的 Kai Kono 领导。 两周前，EDX Markets 宣布 2024 年累计名义交易量达 360 亿美元，Q3 日均交易量增长 59%。EDX 创始投资者包括 Charles Schwab（嘉信理财）、Citadel Securities、Fidelity Digital Assets、Paradigm、Sequoia Capital 和 Virtu Financial。

Odaily News Institutional-grade cryptocurrency exchange EDX Markets announced that its cumulative notional trading volume in 2024 will reach US$36 billion. This week's daily trading volume set a record of US$685 million, and the average daily trading volume in Q3 increased by 59%. It is reported that EDX Markets only trades BTC, ETH and LTC, and recently added support for SHIB and DOGE. As an institutional trading venue, the company operates a central clearing house and recently upgraded its internally developed matching engine to achieve ultra-low latency. EDX founding investors include Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Fidelity Digital Assets, Paradigm, Sequoia Capital and Virtu Financial. (Ledger Insights)

Odaily News Venture capital firms will make hundreds of millions of dollars from Stripe Inc.'s acquisition of crypto platform Bridge for $1.1 billion in cash and stock, according to people familiar with the matter. Institutions including Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital, Bedrock Fund Management, Index Ventures and Haun Ventures have made several times the return on their investments in the startup. When Stripe agreed to acquire Bridge, it was less than three years old. Among them, Sequoia Capital holds a 16% stake in Bridge and may profit more than $100 million from it. It is reported that Sequoia Capital invested $19 million in Bridge's Series A financing last year. (Bloomberg) Earlier, TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington wrote on X that payment company Stripe acquired stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion. Bridge is Stripe's largest acquisition to date and the largest acquisition in the history of the crypto industry. Bridge had previously raised $58 million, including a $40 million Series A financing with a valuation of $200 million. Bridge, founded by entrepreneurs Sean Yu and Zach Abrams, provides software tools to help businesses accept stablecoin payments. The two founders previously sold Venmo competitor Evenly to Block in 2013; Abrams is also a former senior employee of Coinbase.

Odaily News LogX, the on-chain perpetual DEX, announced the completion of a $4 million strategic round of financing, bringing its total financing to $10.1 million. Hashed Emergent, Cumberland VC, Saison Capital, Gate Labs, DWF Labs, Antler, Coinswitch Ventures, Wagmi Ventures, Kairos Capital and others participated in the investment. LogX will use the new financing to develop into a DeFi super application, providing leveraged prediction markets and exotic perps, while expanding to TON, Solana, Bitcoin, Move and EVM ecosystems. Previously, LogX completed a $6.1 million seed round of financing, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Sequoia Capital and others.

Odaily News Safe Superintelligence (SSI), co-founded by OpenAI co-founder and former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised $1 billion to help develop safe artificial intelligence systems that far exceed human capabilities. SSI, which currently has 10 employees, plans to use the funds to purchase computing power and hire top talent. The company will focus on building a small team of researchers and engineers split between Palo Alto, California, and Tel Aviv, Israel. The company declined to disclose its valuation, but people familiar with the matter said it was valued at $5 billion, and investors include top venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Sequoia Capital, DST Global and SV Angel. NFDG, an investment partnership run by Nat Friedman and SSI CEO Daniel Gross, also participated. (Reuters)

Odaily News Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire posted on the X platform that Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested in France on August 25. Although there are some controversies about the Telegram platform, Durov should be regarded as a hero rather than a villain. He pointed out that Durov's original intention in creating Telegram was to resist authoritarian governments and enable citizens to communicate across borders and regimes. Maguire also mentioned that Telegram has played an important role in many pro-democracy protests in the past decade. The French government has filed 12 charges against Durov, but Maguire believes that these charges could be directed at any social media platform. He called for attention to the matter, believing that it concerns the future of Western liberal values, and hoped that French President Macron would intervene in the matter.