The cryptocurrency industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is evidenced by new investments in infrastructure and the increasing attention that companies are paying to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most important events of recent weeks are in the ForkLog review.
Amazon invests up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic
Amazon announced a strategic investment of up to $4 billion in Anthropic. The funding will give the corporation a minority stake in the AI startup.
“Amazon Web Services will become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads, giving our team access to leading compute infrastructure in the form of AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips, which will be used to complement our existing model training and deployment solutions,” the statement said. .
Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI employees Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei in 2021. They were among those who left the company due to internal disagreements, including issues of cooperation with Microsoft.
AI platform AlphaSense raised $150 million at a valuation of $2.5 billion
Market intelligence platform AlphaSense has closed a $150 million Series E funding round, increasing the company’s valuation from $1.7 billion to $2.5 billion.
The BOND-led round was backed by existing investors including Alphabet CapitalG, Viking Global Investors and Goldman Sachs.
The team will use the fresh funding to expand the AlphaSense enterprise solution and other products. According to platform founder Jack Cocco, the latest round will help the company remain at the forefront of the B2B generative AI segment.
AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform for professionals that uses artificial intelligence to collect publicly available information. Headquartered in New York, the company employs more than 1,000 people in operations in the US, UK, Finland, Germany, India and Singapore.
AI platform Writer attracts $100 million in investment
Generative AI platform for enterprises Writer has raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth.
Other participants include WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners, Aspect Ventures and a number of the firm’s clients including Accenture and Vanguard.
Writer will use the funds to develop its own industry-specific large language models with multimodal capabilities.
The platform is business-oriented and provides a full stack of functions for creating AI products. Support includes sales, human resources and marketing.
Gaming blockchain startup Proof of Play raised $33 million
The Proof of Play blockchain game project of former Zynga software development director Amit Mahajan has raised $33 million in seed funding.
The round was led by venture capital firms a16z and Greenoaks. Among the participants: ex-CTO of Coinbase Balaji Srinivasan, Twitch co-founders Justin Kahn and Emmett Shear, as well as a number of other investors.
Proof of Play bills itself as both a game development studio and a technology company.
The startup will focus on developing its first product, Pirate Nation, which is in beta. This is a fully online role-playing game in which participants assemble their pirate crews, battle fantastic creatures and compete with each other.
A startup from a16z attracted $25 million in investments
Web3 company Bastion, founded by former a16z crypto executives, has closed a $25 million seed round of funding.
Investors include a16z itself, Laser Digital Ventures, Robot Ventures, Packy McCormick, Not Boring Capital and others.
The project is led by former a16z crypto CISO Nassim Eddekiouak and CTO Riyaz Faizullabhoy. They also worked for Meta Corporation for several years.
Bastion is designed to make it easier for firms to adopt blockchain-based technologies and attract new users.
The company uses the funds received to scale its activities, attract new employees and obtain additional licenses for further diversification of services.
Bastion’s “intelligent routing” system selects whether transactions occur on-chain or off-chain, providing scalability and efficiency for enterprise customers.
a16z Crypto led the investment round of Web3 startup IYK for $16.8 million
IYK raised $16.8 million from a16z Crypto and other investors following a seed round of financing. The startup helps brands create digital experiences for their customers.
The a16z Crypto Startup School graduate was also supported by 1kx, Collab Currency, Lattice Capital, Palm Tree Crew, Synergis Capital, Coop Records and other investors.
IYK enables brands, musicians and artists to create “digital experiences”, helping them reward customers and fans, while also staying connected to their community.
The startup’s products include an NFC chip that tokenizes physical products and events, including in NFT format. IYK also provides developer APIs and “modules” to further customize the “experience.”
According to the team, since its founding in 2021, the firm has attracted over 100 creators from various fields including fashion, music and art. To reach more users, IYK is launching a self-service platform to help shape digital experiences.
Ethereum observer Rated raises $12 million to expand to other networks
The Rated Labs project, which provides browser services on the Ethereum network, raised $12.88 million as part of a Series A investment round to expand to other blockchains.
The main investor was the venture capital firm Archetype, with participation from Placeholder, 1confirmation, Cherry, Semantic, Robot Ventures, Chorus One, Factor and Maelstrom.
The total amount of funding for the startup was $15 million.
Rated Labs is developing an Ethereum network browser, corresponding API and oracle. The company will use the raised funding to expand the browser to other networks, including Polygon, Solana, Cosmos and Polkadot.
The startup has 12 employees. The head of the project plans to double the staff over the next few quarters, hiring mainly developers.
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