Follow the Money: Over $200 Million in Venture Investments, a $400 Million Acquisition, and Weak Activity From Corporate Investors
Nazar Pyrih
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Between September 1 and 12, 2026, Incrypted’s editorial team tracked 19 investment deals. In 13 cases, the companies disclosed the amounts — the total exceeded $804 million. The recorded deals included venture rounds, M&A transactions, and other capital-raising formats. Details are in the weekly digest.
Classic Venture Capital
During this period, 11 projects raised funding from venture investors totaling about $204 million. In particular:
- $100 million — Payward. Nasdaq invested in Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, valuing it at $21 billion. The investment expands the parties’ partnership to develop infrastructure for trading tokenized stocks. Kraken plans to distribute Nasdaq tokenized stocks on its platform while preserving the voting rights for holders that come with ordinary shares.
- $35 million — Latitude. The Texas-based startup raised capital in a Series A funding round. Venture fund Oak HC/FT led the round, with NEA, Coinbase, Lightspeed Faction, and OpenFX also participating. The company is building a global payments system that enables businesses to transfer money using stablecoins.
- $25 million — OpenReserve. The fintech startup closed a funding round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Jump Crypto, Acrew, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, Clocktower, Quona, AAF Management, and Zero Knowledge Ventures. The company is developing a 24/7 national bank with blockchain infrastructure that will combine banking services, payments, lending, digital asset custody, and tokenized deposits. In parallel, OpenReserve received preliminary conditional approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) to establish a full-fledged national bank. Before it can begin operations, the company must meet the regulator’s requirements, including securing at least $210 million in initial capital and obtaining additional approvals. OpenReserve also plans to launch a separate subsidiary to issue and service dollar-backed stablecoins.
- $10 million — Diameter Pay. The company closed a Series A round co-led by CMT Digital and Lightspeed Faction. The startup is building payments infrastructure for institutional clients that bridges traditional dollar accounts and payment rails with stablecoins. Diameter Pay provides institutional clients with U.S. dollar accounts, as well as the ability to fund and withdraw in stablecoins via traditional payment rails. Since the start of 2026, the platform has processed more than $10 billion in payments.
- $8 million — Firelight. The decentralized DeFi capital protection protocol closed a seed round led by Gumi Cryptos Capital, with participation from Maven 11, Metalayer, Joint Effects, and Tribe Capital. Firelight is developing onchain infrastructure to protect funds from protocol exploits, smart contract bugs, and economic risks. The funds will be used to further develop the protocol, expand its capital protection offerings, and grow partnerships across the ecosystem. Firelight currently uses XRP as the base asset to back coverage and plans to add bitcoin and XLM. The protocol’s first integrations are expected to go live in September.
- $8 million — MemeBitcoin. The project closed a strategic round with participation from Gemhead Capital, Archer Capital, M2M Capital, and Mayer Venture. The team is turning the hunt for access to Satoshi’s wallet into a collective activity, where users generate and test potential private keys. The funds will go toward launching early access to MBTC, rolling out the full version of the website, the forum, and wallet connections, as well as activating the Proof of Viral mechanic. After that, the team plans a global campaign with key opinion leaders, a full public launch, and preparations for MBTC listings on centralized exchanges.
- $7 million — Antarctic Exchange. The Singapore-based decentralized perpetuals exchange closed a round at a $70 million valuation. Participants included Valisa Capital Markets, Lucidity Capital, Republic Crypto, and a consortium of prop traders specializing in options, futures, and structured products. The company will use the funds to build out a DEX for retail traders with a trading experience comparable to centralized exchanges. The platform combines self-custody and DEX transparency with CEX-like speed, leverage, and tooling.
- $7 million — Antarctic Exchange. The Singapore-based decentralized perpetuals exchange closed a round at a $70 million valuation. Participants included Valisa Capital Markets, Lucidity Capital, Republic Crypto, and a consortium of prop traders specializing in options, futures, and structured products. The company will use the funds to develop a DEX for retail traders with a trading experience comparable to centralized exchanges. The platform combines self-custody and DEX transparency with CEX speed, leverage, and tooling.
- $6 million — RealGo. UZ Capital made a strategic investment in the project, which is building Meme 3.0 infrastructure for the global meme ecosystem. RealGo combines AR, AI, geolocation services, and onchain assets to turn meme IP from speculative tokens into digital assets that can be collected, used, and traded.
- $3 million — Plenti. The Colombian fintech closed a seed round led by Tether, with participation from Verda Ventures. The platform specializes in multi-currency accounts, international transfers, and investment products, and has more than 150,000 active users and over $3.1 billion in annual transaction volume. The funds will be used to strengthen operations in Colombia and expand into the Peru and Bolivia markets. Plenti also offers yields of up to 8% per year on balances, as well as fractional investing in US stocks, ETFs, and crypto assets.
- $1.25 million — ParlayX. The team trading platform for prediction markets completed a pre-seed round led by Dreamcraft Ventures. The company is building infrastructure for institutional participants that enables multiple traders to collaborate on prediction markets, unlike the traditional “one person — one account” model.
- $1 million — Polaris. The onchain yield protocol completed a funding round with participation from the Ethereum Foundation, Fusion managed by IPOR, Altitude, Liquity, and LI.FI. The round also included more than 30 founders and investors, including The Daily Gwei founder Anthony Sassano.
In addition, GMO VenturePartners, the venture arm of GMO Internet Group, held an interim close of its eighth fund since 2005, raising about ¥10 billion ($65 million). Investors include Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Mizuho Bank, GMO Internet Group companies, other financial and corporate entities, as well as several startups from the GMO-VP portfolio. The fund has a ¥12 billion cap and continues raising capital ahead of the final close.
GFF8 will focus on “fintech for the AI era” — specifically, stablecoins, tokenized deposits, AI-based credit underwriting, and next-generation financial infrastructure.
Tether and Fasanara Capital also launched a $400 million private credit fund to finance small and medium-sized businesses and consumersl will manage the fund and deploy capital into short-term, asset-backed loans, while Tether will be responsible for sourcing financing opportunities and settlement infrastructuretional institutional capital
Another project also received funding, but did not disclose the investment amount.
TRM Labs, which develops AI-powered tools for investigating financial crimes, expanded its Series C round led by Blockchain Capital. Following the deal, TRM Labs’ valuation reached $2 billion, which is double the figure from the previous round in February 2026.
Token sales
No activity was observed in the token sales sector this week.
Up-to-date data on current and upcoming token sales is available in a dedicated section of our website, where users can review information on active and planned token sale campaigns. In addition, our team regularly updates the dedicated Telegram channel, promptly covering key developments.
Corporate placements and deals
Between September 1 and September 11, several corporate deals were recorded, including:
$200 million — Félix Pago. The fintech remittance platform closed a funding round consisting of $87 million in equity led by Andreessen Horowitz and a $113 million credit line from General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund. QED Investors, Castle Island Ventures, Switch Ventures, Contour Venture Partners, and Endeavor Catalyst also joined the equity round.
The company uses WhatsApp and stablecoins to facilitate cross-border transfers. Félix Pago has already processed more than $8 billion in transactions and plans to expand its product lineup beyond remittances by adding lending and savings for Latin American immigrants in the US.
The funds will also be directed toward AI development, engineering teams, and financial infrastructure. The company plans to build an AI assistant for everyday financial decisions and has already launched mobile top-ups for users’ family members in Latin American countries.
Mergers and acquisitions
Several M&A deals took place over the week.
$400 million — Tazapay. Circle agreed to acquire Singapore-based B2B cross-border payments platform Tazapay. The deal предусматриває a payout of about $400 million in Circle stock, and the final amount may be adjusted to account for Tazapay’s debt, cash, and transaction costs.
Tazapay has more than 60 banking and fintech partners and payments infrastructure in more than 100 countries and markets. The platform processes more than $25 billion in annual payment volume, with about 60% already coming from stablecoin transactions. The acquisition is expected to expand Circle’s global payments infrastructure and accelerate USDC adoption in cross-border settlements.
Sei Labs acquired blockchain data indexing and analytics platform Bilinear Labs., and its team will join development of Sei Network and Sei Giga. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Bilinear Labs will shut down on September 14. The Rust-based platform indexed hundreds of billions of onchain events and developed Bring Your Own ABI (BYOABI) technology.
Oddpool — a prediction markets data analytics platform — joined Kalshi. The company was founded by Y Combinator alumni Avi Aror and Ritesh Malpani, and its team built infrastructure for working with prediction market data for institutions, economists, policymakers, and businesses.
Robinhood announced a strategic partnership with Crypto.com and OG.com to expand its prediction markets business. Under the deal, the platform began routing a portion of event contracts tied to American football through Crypto.com’s exchange and clearing infrastructure regulated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Uniswap Labs purchased PONS tokens, the native asset of the eponymous launchpad on Robinhood Chain, as part of deepening the partnership.
Accelerators, Grants, and DAO Funding
This week, ecosystems and DAOs did not allocate funds to support projects.
Top Investors
The most active investors in the period from September 1 to September 12, 2026, were companies such as Robinhood, a16z crypto, and Coinbase Ventures.
What Is in Investors’ Focus?
During the period under review, investors focused primarily on the development of blockchain infrastructure and services, as well as the DeFi sector.
Follow coverage on Incrypted to stay up to date on new investments in the development of the digital world.
