VC Roundup: Investments in Web3 startups top $1B in July

Web3-based startups raised more than $1.1 billion from venture capitalists across 118 deals in July, according to data available on Rootdata. 

As the market experiences more liquidity and investors regain confidence in the crypto ecosystem, new ways of raising capital keep emerging. Lightning Ventures, for instance, recently announced the regulated crowdfunding portal Thunder Funder, which allows eligible companies to offer and sell securities through crowdfunding up to $5 million annually.

Along with bootstrapping startups, the fund seeks to offer opportunities to individuals, especially retail investors, in largely inaccessible investment markets. Thunder Funder’s parent company, LTNG Ventures Inc., has closed a $500,000 pre-seed funding round to back the initiative. The fund will initially focus on open-source and Bitcoin-related projects.

This edition of Cointelegraph’s VC Roundup also highlights some of the startups that secured capital in July.

Pichi Finance raises $2.5M in Seed Funding for points trading

Pichi Finance has completed a $2.5 million seed funding round led by UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital, and Mantle Network. The startup is a trustless points trading protocol that allows users to trade points earned from protocols like EigenLayer, Ether.Fi, and HyperLiquid. Other investors include DWF Ventures, Wise3 Ventures, and Genesis Block Ventures. Pichi uses the ERC-6551 token standard to enable the creation of Michi Wallet NFTs, deposit tokens and trade of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) along with accrued points. According to the startup, the model allows transactions without requiring collateral from buyers or sellers.

Sybill secures $11M for AI-sales assistant

Sybill has secured $11 million in Series A funding led by Greycroft with participation from existing investors Neotribe Ventures, Powerhouse Ventures, and Uncorrelated Ventures. The recent round brings the company’s total funding to $14.5 million. According to an announcement, the company will use the funds to scale its platform, which automates sales tasks through artificial intelligence. Sybill’s AI assistant is said to autonomously complete tasks like call summarization, CRM updates, and email drafting for sales reps. Since its launch in 2022, the startup has seen its revenue grow 15-fold. “When a salesperson is spending most of their time in their CRM rather than talking to customers, you know that something needs to change,” said in a statement Sybil’s CEO and co-founder Gorish Aggarwal.

AI cloud provider Hyperbolic secures $7M seed funding

Open-access AI computing platform Hyperbolic has secured $7 million in seed funding led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction. The funding, which includes participation from investors like Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal, will support the development of Hyperbolic’s AI cloud platform, including hiring engineers. This seed round builds on a pre-seed investment of $725K from Chapter One, Modular Capital, Samsung Next, Blizzard Fund by Avalanche, IMO Ventures, SNZ Holding, and Ausvic Capital in November 2022. Hyperbolic is building a decentralized platform that aggregates global GPU resources with verifiable access through blockchain technology. According to the startup, its platform offers access to AI models at a fraction of the traditional cost.

Raad Labs closes $2.25M funding round led by CoinFund

Raad Labs, a blockchain climate tech company from the Montauk Climate incubator, announced a $2.25 million funding round led by CoinFund, with participation from Tribe, EV3, and Protagonist. The startup optimizes climate data measurement and forecasting through a decentralized network of sensors (DePIN model) that monitors weather patterns, greenhouse gas emissions, wildfire risk, and soil degradation. Raad Labs’ technology is currently used for monitoring, forecasting, and utility service delivery, with future applications in AI, large language models, and methane detection. According to the startup, the DePIN model provides low-cost weather data to governments and industries and generates passive income for data suppliers. The company is among the first startups from Montauk Climate, which incubates sustainable tech ventures. With significant losses resulting from extreme weather events, the global market for weather forecasting is expected to grow to $4.18 billion by 2030.

OKX Ventures announces investment in zkLink for liquidity aggregation

OKX Ventures has invested an undisclosed amount in zkLink, a developer of zero-knowledge (ZK) infrastructure solutions focused on scaling and unifying assets across Ethereum and layer-2 rollups. zkLink’s main product, the aggregated layer-3 zkEVM network called zkLink Nova, addresses liquidity fragmentation with transactions on a single L3 platform via zk-Proofs. Launched in mid-March, zkLink Nova reportedly achieved a total value locked (TVL) of $1.05 billion and over 1 million unique wallet addresses, processing more than 17 million transactions across nine ecosystems, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, and others.