The fundraising round, led by Tradeweb and DRW, marks a convergence of traditional finance leaders and crypto-native investors to scale blockchain-based finance

NEW YORK, June 24, 2025 — Digital Asset, the company behind the pioneering Canton Network, today announced it has raised $135 million in its strategic funding round. Led by DRW Venture Capital and Tradeweb Markets, the round includes participation from major institutions in both traditional and decentralized finance, including BNP Paribas, Circle Ventures, Citadel Securities, The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), Goldman Sachs, IMC, Liberty City Ventures, Optiver, Paxos, Polychain Capital, QCP, Republic Digital, 7RIDGE, and Virtu Financial.

This funding accelerates institutional and decentralized finance adoption on the Canton Network, the only public, permissionless Layer-1 blockchain that offers configurable privacy and institutional-grade compliance at scale. The capital will rapidly expand the integration of hundreds of billions of real-world assets (RWAs) onto Canton, building upon its already substantial deployment of diverse asset classes, including bonds, money market funds, alternative funds, commodities, repurchase agreements (repos), mortgages, life insurance, and annuities.

The raise also deepens the relationship with several firms already part of the Canton Network and its Global Synchronizer Foundation, including, BNP Paribas, DRW, Goldman Sachs, Liberty City Ventures, QCP, and Tradeweb, all of whom have played various roles in either the testing, governance, infrastructure, or app development on the Network since its inception. The Canton Network, built and operationalized by Digital Asset in close partnership with top global financial institutions and technology providers, represents the inevitable next phase of financial infrastructure. Canton has experienced rapid growth over the past year, with nearly 400 ecosystem participants on the Network, including global leaders in both traditional and decentralized finance.

This funding highlights the market’s recognition of Digital Asset’s vision and the pioneering design of the Canton Network, the only network built from the ground up with configurable on-chain privacy. By allowing institutions to tailor privacy settings to their specific needs, Canton overcomes the primary barrier to blockchain adoption: the conflict between transparency and financial confidentiality. As the first comprehensive solution of its kind, Canton bridges the gap between blockchain innovation and real-world financial compliance.

Yuval Rooz, Co-Founder and CEO of Digital Asset:
“This funding milestone validates the inevitability of what we envisioned years ago: a privacy-enabled public blockchain designed specifically for institutional adoption. Canton is already actively supporting numerous asset classes–from bonds to alternative funds–and this raise will accelerate onboarding even more real-world assets, finally making blockchain’s transformative promise an institutional-scale reality.”

Don Wilson, Founder and CEO of DRW:
“Today, major players from crypto and traditional finance have joined Digital Asset on its mission to catalyze the next evolution in markets. Building on the work that we started a decade ago, we are at the inflection point of being able to use blockchain at scale in traditional markets. With trillions of dollars’ worth of real-world assets already leveraging the Canton Blockchain, this next round of funding creates significant momentum for the company, and cements Canton as the de facto protocol for global collateral mobility.”

Billy Hult, CEO of Tradeweb:
“Digital Asset and Canton are addressing real-world challenges in financial markets, not just theoretical concepts. The fact that such a wide range of asset classes are already integrated onto Canton is an important sign that this network is ready for mainstream finance. We are excited to support Digital Asset’s vision. At Tradeweb, we see DLT and smart contracts as catalysts for reimagining and reshaping market structure—unlocking workflow efficiencies and accelerating the shift toward electronic markets.”

Mathew McDermott, Global Head of Digital Assets at Goldman Sachs:
“Goldman Sachs remains committed to accelerating the adoption of digital assets and a blockchain-powered financial system. Our longstanding relationship with Digital Asset stems from a deep conviction in the strength of their technology, which continues to be foundational to the development and ongoing success of GS DAP^®. We are pleased to participate in their latest funding round and to continue to support them as a critical player in the institutional digital asset ecosystem.”

Melvin Deng, CEO of QCP:
“We believe digital assets should be a core part of institutional finance, and at QCP, that’s our mission. Canton is creating the kind of infrastructure that makes that possible – compliant, interoperable, and trusted. Our investment signals belief not only in the technology, but in the purpose behind it.”

Josh Rosenthal, Partner at Polychain Capital:
“Canton Network addresses critical barriers–privacy, compliance, and scale–that have long hindered institutional DeFi adoption. Polychain invests in visionary infrastructure, and Canton’s progress positions it as a catalyst for merging traditional finance with decentralized innovation.”

About Digital Asset:
Digital Asset is a leading innovator in blockchain technology, transforming traditional and digital financial markets with privacy-enabled solutions that improve capital flow and create a more efficient, fair, and resilient global system. As the creator of the Canton Network, the only public layer one blockchain with privacy, and a founding member of its Global Synchronizer Foundation, Digital Asset has been a pioneer of this open, secure, and interoperable infrastructure. Founded in 2014, Digital Asset is committed to reshaping the future of finance by enabling real-time efficiencies, 24/7 global transactions, and unlocking the full potential of cryptocurrencies, digital assets, and the continued convergence of decentralized and traditional finance.

About Canton Network:
The Canton Network is the first public, permissionless blockchain purpose-built for institutional finance—uniquely combining privacy, compliance, and scalability. Governed by the Global Synchronizer Foundation with participation from leading global financial institutions, Canton enables real-time, secure synchronization and settlement across multiple asset classes on a shared, interoperable infrastructure. Initially developed by Digital Asset and now open-sourced, Canton supports decentralized governance and collaborative app development. By overcoming the limitations of existing blockchains, it unlocks new efficiencies for regulated institutions and facilitates the convergence between traditional finance and institutional crypto.

Contact:

Paul Patella
[email protected]
+1 914 645 8662

SOURCE Digital Asset (US) Corp.

AACHEN, Germany, June 24, 2025 — OLEDWorks GmbH, a wholly owned subsidiary of OLEDWorks LLC (Rochester, NY, USA), has received an investment grant from the joint task “Improvement of Regional Economic Structure” to expand its OLED production facility in Aachen. The project, entitled “OLEDWorks Production Capacity Extension 0.5 (CE05)”, focuses on doubling the company’s production capacity for organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) for use in the automotive industry.

The Regional Economic Development Program of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (RWP) supports commercial enterprises with funds from the joint task “Improvement of Regional Economic Structure” (GRW). With the RWP grant, the state of North Rhine-Westphalia is supporting OLEDWorks GmbH’s investment in the Aachen region with a grant of approximately €4.0 million, approximately 10% of the total investment.

“The funding from the Regional Economic Development Program, supported by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, enables us to expand our production capacities and, at the same time, strengthen regional economic development with our commitment to innovation,” said Wolfgang Görgen, Managing Director of OLEDWorks GmbH. “In view of the increasing demand for OLED lighting systems in the automotive sector, the expansion of production capacity enables us to meet the growing demand from our customers. At the same time, high-quality jobs are being created in North Rhine-Westphalia on a permanent basis.”

“Our support is having an impact: OLEDWorks is not only creating additional production capacity, but also many new jobs for local people,” says Johanna Tjaden-Schulte, member of the board of NRW.BANK. “That is why together with the City of Aachen’s economic development agency we have provided targeted support to the company – with advice and appropriate funding for more innovation and more employment in North Rhine-Westphalia.”

The project involves expanding and modernizing the existing OLEDWorks production infrastructure. The expansions, adjustments, and modernizations affect both the production lines and the building infrastructure. The goals of these measures are to reduce production cycle times and increase operational efficiency.

Careful planning was carried out to avoid recertification of current products and processes and to minimize production downtime during implementation.

Once the production expansion is complete, approximately 40,000 m² of high-quality OLED panels will reach customers annually. This corresponds to a doubling of the current facility capacity.

OLEDWorks GmbH will create at least 59 new permanent jobs over the course of the 36-month project.

Project name: OLEDWorks Production Capacity Extension 0.5 (CE05)

Total investment: approx. EUR 40,000,000

Approved funding: approx. EUR 4.00 million

Planned project start: January 1, 2025

Implementation period: 36 months

Jobs: at least 59.2 full-time equivalents (FTEs)

This investment strengthens OLEDWorks GmbH’s leading position in the field of advanced OLED lighting technologies and its commitment to sustainable growth and high-tech manufacturing in Germany.

About OLEDWorks GmbH:
OLEDWorks is a global leader in the development and production of innovative organic light-emitting diodes (OLED technology). The manufacture of the world’s most powerful OLED panels and the rapid implementation of product innovations enable OLEDWorks to produce customized lighting solutions for the automotive, specialty applications, and micro display industries.

OLEDWorks is certified according to IATF 16949 and ISO 9001, 14001, 45001.

SOURCE OLEDWorks

Company closes $4.54M in Seed round led by Caduceus Capital Partners, with participation from Bread and Butter Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and a strategic RCM company

SAN FRANCISCO, June 23, 2025 — Voicecare AI, a healthcare administration general intelligence (HAGI) company, closes seed round of $4.54M to automate back-office conversations and super-staff the workforce through the application of generative AI. With $4.54 million in funding led by Caduceus Capital Partners, and participation from Bread and Butter Ventures, Mayo Clinic, and a strategic revenue cycle management (RCM) company, VoiceCare AI seeks to improve access, adherence, and outcomes for patients and the healthcare workforce, putting the focus back on patient engagement.

The round builds on VoiceCare AI’s momentum since emerging from stealth earlier this year. The company’s flagship voice AI agent, Joy, has already been deployed to automate long, complex voice-based workflows across payer communication processes such as benefits verification, prior authorizations, and claims management. The investment enables the company to accelerate scaling operations, enhance platform intelligence, accelerate product development, expand its engineering and go-to-market team efforts.

“VoiceCare AI’s goal is to tackle one of the largest and most overlooked pain points in healthcare,” said Parag Jhaveri, founder and CEO of VoiceCare AI. “With this funding, we are doubling down on our mission to reduce the burden of administrative conversations and tasks so care teams can prioritize high-value patient care.”

VoiceCare AI’s platform is HIPAA-compliant, SOC 2 Type II attested, and built with enterprise-grade privacy and security infrastructure. Beyond compliance, the system is engineered to eliminate common concerns in AI-powered healthcare workflows: hallucinations, data omissions, and misrouted communication. Through VoiceCare’s proprietary Evaluation Framework (VC-Eval), the platform validates the accuracy of healthcare conversations by comparing them to human-in-the-loop expert judgment. Its healthcare-specific simulation engine stress-tests the AI agent, Joy, against thousands of real-world scenarios to ensure consistent, reliable, and contextually aware performance in production settings.

Together, these components power VoiceCare AI’s “zero-skip, hallucination-free” architecture. This ensures that the AI agent, Joy, does not bypass critical questions and delivers context-bound, verifiable responses. It is this deep control layer—not just the underlying LLM—that provides the safety and reliability required for highly complex clinical and administrative environments.

“Healthcare continues to face a widening gap between rising demand and limited capacity—and administrative burden remains one of the biggest drivers of that strain,” said Scott Kolesar, Managing Partner at Caduceus Capital Partners. “VoiceCare AI isn’t just automating routine tasks—it’s seeking to redefine how back-office work is done. With purpose-built agentic AI, they’re working to empower care teams nationwide to redirect time and focus back to what truly matters: improving patient outcomes.”

Mayo Clinic has a financial interest in the technology referenced in this press release. Mayo Clinic will use any revenue it receives to support its not-for-profit mission in patient care, education and research.

About VoiceCare AI

VoiceCare AI is a healthcare administration general intelligence (HAGI) company built to automate back-office conversations and super-staff the workforce through the application of generative AI. The company’s AI voice-based automation and agentic AI architecture massively eliminates administrative burden and improves operational efficiency. “Joy,” its human-like voice AI agent, is capable of supporting long, complex, and highly nuanced conversations and extended hold times. VoiceCare AI has raised $4.54 million in seed funding led by Caduceus Capital Partners, and participation from Bread and Butter Ventures and Mayo Clinic.

For more information, visit us at Voicecare AI and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.

Media Contact
Parag Jhaveri
[email protected]

SOURCE VoiceCare AI

NEW YORK, June 23, 2025 — Veda, the leading DeFi vault platform enabling crypto applications, asset issuers, and protocols to build enterprise-grade cross chain yield products, today announced it raised $18M in funding. The round was led by CoinFund, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, GSR, Maelstrom, Animoca Ventures, Mantle EcoFund, BitGo, Credibly Neutral, Draper Dragon, Heartcore, PEER VC, and Relayer Capital. Angel investors Anchorage Co-Founder and CEO Nathan McCauley, Ether.Fi Co-Founder and CEO Mike Silagadze, and Polygon Co-Founder and COO Sandeep Nailwal also participated in the round.

Unlocking access to DeFi

DeFi has the potential to empower financial freedom with an open, transparent system that is low risk and free from value-extractive third parties. However, DeFi today is complex for the user, and there isn’t the right infrastructure to build multichain protocols at scale. To help bring DeFi to consumer and institutional audiences, financial applications must remove this complexity and manage risk on behalf of users, while preserving self-custody, transparency and security.

“The best infrastructure is invisible — it just works. That’s what we’ve built with Veda,” said Sun Raghupathi, Co-Founder and CEO of Veda. “We enable any platform to offer onchain yield without exposing the complexity of DeFi, while preserving what makes it powerful: self-custody, transparency, and control.”

A universal vault infrastructure 

Veda abstracts away the complexities of DeFi so that application users can have a seamless experience transacting through its universal vault infrastructure platform – the largest of its kind in DeFi. A vault is a smart contract that holds user deposits and applies a defined strategy to generate yield or execute a financial function. Veda allows developers and institutions to create vaults for any DeFi use case, from liquid restaking tokens (LRTs), to yield-based stablecoins, to savings accounts, to bootstrapping ecosystems, and more, all from Veda’s BoringVault framework, the most used vault standard in DeFi. Veda is one of the very few vault infrastructure protocols that is modular, composable, and cross-chain to fit any DeFi use-case that a protocol or institution may want. Since its March 2024 launch, this vault standard has amassed over 100,000 users and powers yield strategies across a wider range of segments such as yield vaults, including Plasma’s Vault, ether.fi Liquid, Lombard’s DeFi Vault and, LRTs like ether.fi’s eBTC and weETHs, native yield for chains including Sonic Rings and Corn’s sBTCN, pre-deposit campaigns for Berachain and TAC, and wallets including Binance Wallet and Bybit Web3.

“Institutions and fintechs aren’t just exploring DeFi in theory anymore — they’re actively implementing it,” said Stephanie Vaughan, Co-Founder and COO of Veda. “Veda’s BoringVault framework is already the definitive standard in DeFi, and the only one operating at this scale with a flawless security record. This raise allows us to deepen those partnerships and accelerate the next wave of DeFi adoption across established financial platforms.”

Veda was founded in early 2024 by CEO Sun Raghupathi, CTO Joe Terrigno, and COO Stephanie Vaughan, bringing a wealth of experience from previous ventures. Veda has over $3.7 billion in Total-Value Locked (TVL) to date, over 100,000 depositors, and plans to partner with a top five global centralized exchange in the next month.

“Veda solves an unmet and growing need in the DeFi ecosystem—as more wealth comes on chain, infrastructure for the on-chain equivalent of traditional ‘funds’ must exist, and Veda is the leader in providing these vaults,” said David Pakman, Head of Venture Investments and Managing Partner at CoinFund. “This investment reflects our conviction in the expansive venture return potential in DeFi and the Veda team’s foresight and leadership in providing critical foundational infrastructure for the future of financial markets.”

About Veda 

Veda is the DeFi engine for financial apps, enabling protocols, asset issuers, and institutions to build consumer-grade cross chain yield products. As the leading vault infrastructure platform, it already powers many of DeFi‘s largest yield products and has over $3.7 billion in deposits.

For more information, visit https://veda.tech/

About CoinFund 

CoinFund is one of the world’s first cryptonative investment firms and a registered investment adviser founded in 2015. The firm champions the leaders of the new internet, powered by foresight as active investors to achieve extraordinary outcomes. CoinFund invests in seed, venture, and liquid opportunities within the blockchain sector with a focus on digital assets, decentralization technologies, and key enabling infrastructure.

For more information, visit www.coinfund.io, LinkedIn or join us on X.

SOURCE CoinFund

Enterprise data quality platform sees 5x revenue growth and signs major financial institution,
fueling rapid team and product expansion

• $10M oversubscribed Series A led by BMW i Ventures, joined by Conductive Ventures, The Hill Fund by Firebrand Ventures, and existing investors
• 5x revenue growth over the past year with new wins, including a top 3 U.S. financial institution, driven by surging demand for proactive data quality
• Platform surfaces 30,000+ real-world anomalies per month, driving measurable business impact

ATLANTA, June 23, 2025 — Qualytics, the enterprise platform for augmented data quality, today announced an oversubscribed $10M Series A funding round, led by BMW i Ventures, to meet surging demand for augmented data quality in the AI era, where data integrity determines competitive advantage. Conductive Ventures and The Hill Fund by Firebrand Ventures joined the round, along with existing investors Tech Square Ventures, Knoll Ventures, Inner Loop Capital, SaaS Venture Capital, and Rich Family Ventures.

As enterprises rapidly expand their data-driven operations and AI initiatives, the need for trustworthy data is critical. Founded by data veterans Gorkem Sevinc and Eric Simmerman, Qualytics empowers teams to proactively manage data quality with automated anomaly detection, intelligent rule generation, and no-code workflows — all through a platform built for collaboration between business and technical users. The investment comes at a time when Gartner predicts that 70% of organizations will adopt modern data quality tools by 2027.

In a major milestone, Qualytics recently signed one of the top three U.S. financial institutions, reinforcing its position as the trusted data quality platform for large, data-driven enterprises.  The company’s rapid growth reflects demand for a platform that works seamlessly across cloud-native and legacy environments, integrating with tools like Databricks, Snowflake, SQL Server, Oracle, and data catalogs such as Atlan and Alation.

“At its core, Qualytics solves a problem every data-driven organization thinks it’s managing, until the costs of bad data hit,” said Baris Guzel, Partner at BMW i Ventures. “The dirty secret in today’s AI arms race is that most models are trained on unreliable inputs. Garbage in, garbage out. Qualytics flips that on its head. They bring continuous, automated data quality monitoring to the production layer and that’s a foundational shift.”

Data operationalization has exposed two urgent challenges: ensuring reliable data to fuel AI and analytics, and democratizing governance across organizations. Qualytics addresses both by delivering a deeply automated, intelligent platform that profiles data to support deep learning at scale, automatically infers and evolves quality rules, and streamlines remediation — all with minimal setup and maximum usability across teams. Where legacy solutions depend on complex rule-writing and siloed ownership, Qualytics replaces friction with automation — enabling technical and business teams to co-own data quality at scale, and delivering the enterprise-grade resilience needed to mitigate costly breakdowns that cost organizations an average of $12.9M annually.

To support accelerating demand, Qualytics is scaling its team across product and go-to-market functions, including engineering, product management, customer success, and sales. This growth will enable the company to expand platform capabilities, onboard new customers faster, and deepen support for existing users.

“We’re excited to partner with BMW i Ventures and Conductive Ventures to scale Qualytics,” said Gorkem Sevinc, Co-Founder and CEO. “Eric and I built the platform we always wanted, one that puts automation and usability at the heart of data quality management. With this new investment and our strong revenue growth, we’re more confident than ever that Qualytics is delivering what modern data practitioners truly need to manage data quality at scale.”

About Qualytics.

Data quality remains a top concern for data teams—and as enterprises scale their data efforts, ensuring accuracy, consistency, and trust in data becomes increasingly complex. The rise of AI-driven insights, coupled with the risk of hallucinations, has made data quality and governance more critical than ever. Without a proactive approach, poor data quality can lead to flawed insights, compliance risks, and costly business mistakes.

Qualytics enables enterprises to manage data quality (DQ) at scale with AI-driven automation and seamless collaboration. Our intelligent platform automatically generates and maintains data quality rules, bridging the gap between business and data teams to ensure data integrity across the organization.

For more information about Qualytics, please visit https://qualytics.ai.

About BMW i Ventures.

BMW i Ventures is the independent venture capital firm of BMW Group. From offices in Silicon Valley and Munich, BMW i Ventures invests in early to growth-stage companies defining the future of automotive, sustainability, manufacturing, and supply chain. Since starting in 2011, the firm has $800M under management and has invested in over 75 startups, including Bcomp, Boston Metal, CelLink, ChargePoint, GaN Systems, Motorway, Tekion, and Xometry.

For more information: https://www.bmwiventures.com

Media Contact:
Mary Magnani, CodePR
[email protected]

SOURCE Qualytics

Company has changed how $19.5T in U.S. consumer liabilities are accessed and managed through its credit data and payments platform

OAKLAND, Calif., June 23, 2025 — Powering the future of the consumer credit ecosystem, Spinwheel is rewiring how consumer credit data is accessed, activated, and embedded into financial workflows. Today, the company announced the close of its $30 million Series A funding round, led by F-Prime with participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital, and Fika Ventures. Spinwheel’s real-time consumer credit data and payments platform currently supports more than 15 million users and 165 million connected credit and liability accounts, facilitating over $1.5 trillion in consumer debt across its network. The new funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, expand its data sets and product offerings, and scale its go-to-market team as it builds the foundational infrastructure to transform the consumer credit data and payments ecosystem.

Today, the consumer credit ecosystem is buckling under the weight of legacy systems. U.S. consumer liabilities have reached $19.5 trillion – which is up from $13.3 trillion just a decade ago. Additionally, the average American holds between 10 to 14 credit accounts. Despite the scale, the infrastructure supporting credit data access and payments remains fragmented, slow, and riddled with friction for financial institutions, while consumers are left juggling multiple logins and outdated information.

“Financial providers are faced with immense customer service friction, high operational and acquisition costs, missing or outdated data sets and a cumbersome, disjointed experience for consumers who, in turn, are struggling to view, understand and manage numerous liability and credit accounts. We are transforming this challenge by building the foundational infrastructure to power the future of the consumer credit ecosystem,” said Tomás Campos, co-founder and CEO, Spinwheel. “We believe this is an enormous opportunity that will outpace open banking. With a focus on first principles and innovation, we will elevate our financial clients’ ability to deliver better credit outcomes to consumers like never before.”

Spinwheel was built to establish a unified infrastructure layer that simplifies how liabilities are accessed, activated, and resolved. Spinwheel partners with lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs. The company’s proprietary, credentialless technology requires only two data fields – phone number and date of birth – streamlining and simplifying user actions and delivering a more complete consumer credit profile, empowering financial clients to provide better financial products and a seamless experience for the consumer. Spinwheel’s clients see significant improvements in conversion rates, increased revenue, lower operational and acquisition costs, as well as mitigated risk.

“Spinwheel is tackling one of the most complex and consequential frontiers in financial data: real-time consumer liabilities. While open banking has largely focused on assets, there is a large opportunity in mapping the full liability picture across credit cards, mortgages, student loans, and more,” said David Jegen, Managing Partner at F-Prime. “We’re in the early innings of this category’s evolution. Spinwheel’s team has the right combination of deep technical skill and market insight required to lead in a market where challenges are large and the stakes are high.”

This latest funding will accelerate its technology to further automate credit management and unlock more data through its agentic AI platform, expand into new access points and offerings for non-traditional data and sources, and build out its go-to-market team. Spinwheel’s infrastructure is built with bank-grade security standards, ensuring that while data is made more accessible and actionable, consumer privacy and protection remain paramount.

About Spinwheel

Spinwheel, a real-time consumer credit data and payments AI company, is revolutionizing the consumer credit ecosystem. The company partners with lenders, marketplaces and personal financial management platforms to provide real-time, verified consumer credit data to process payments as part of their clients’ existing workflow and operations via APIs and its agentic AI platform. Founded in 2019, Spinwheel has grown to more than 15 million users and 165 million accounts, facilitating $1.5 trillion in connected debt across its network. The company is backed by F-Prime, QED Investors, Foundation Capital, and Fika Ventures. To learn more, please visit spinwheel.io.

Media Contact:
Wendy Serafin
[email protected]

SOURCE Spinwheel

DUBAI, UAE, June 23, 2025 — Ajna Capital, a leading early-stage Web3 venture fund, today announced that it has taken a strategic stake in HONEY, the native token of Hivemapper, the world’s first decentralized mapping network. Ajna Capital will work closely with Hivemapper, accelerating its mission to democratize map-building, rewarding global contributors, and unlocking new geospatial use cases.

Hivemapper’s platform radically transforms how maps are created and maintained, moving from centralized mapping monopolies to a community-first model. Contributors capture 4K street-level imagery using dashcams, earning HONEY tokens for building an ever-expanding, real-time global map. The result is fresher coverage, cost efficiency, and open data utility for industries ranging from logistics to urban planning.

Hivemapper has raised over $21 million in funding to date, with backing from top-tier investors such as Van Eck, Multicoin Capital, GV (Google Ventures), Spark Capital, and Solana Ventures. The project has consistently attracted institutional investors and thought leaders in the DePIN and Web3 ecosystems. Ajna Capital has acquired approximately 1.5% of the total circulating supply of HONEY and will work closely in an advisory role, helping the project expand its reach and impact in South Asia, especially India.

“Hivemapper is building a decentralized, contributor-owned map of the world. Ajna’s strategic stake gives us the ability to tap deeper into regional insights, talent, and partnerships across South Asia as we scale our contributor base and coverage” said Ariel Seidman, CEO of Hivemapper. “Decentralized mapping is a powerful example of token incentives unlocking real-world impact,” said Gourish Singla, Founding Managing Partner of Ajna Capital. “We’re thrilled to back Ariel and his team as they lead the next wave of geospatial innovation.”

For more information, users can visit hivemapper.com.

About Hivemapper

Hivemapper is the world’s first decentralized mapping network that rewards community contributors with HONEY tokens for collecting and uploading 4K street-level imagery. Built on Solana, the platform empowers a global network to create dynamic, ever-updating maps for logistical, commercial, and civic applications.

About Ajna Capital

Ajna Capital is a Web3-native early-stage venture fund backing bold founders and real-world blockchain applications, offering capital, strategic guidance, and access to a deep network of partners and institutional investors.

Contact
Ajna Capital
[email protected] 

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2716536/Ajna_Capital_Hivemapper_Network.jpg

SOURCE Ajna Capital

Ex-Rally & Kabam Founders Tackle Inflation and Low Rates, Bringing High-Yield DeFi Savings to Everyone Through a Secure, Non-Custodial Platform

WASHINGTON, June 20, 2025 — YieldClub today unveiled its mobile app designed to make high-yield crypto savings simple and accessible, announcing an upcoming public launch alongside a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round. Aiming to bridge the gap between traditional finance and the high-return potential of decentralized finance (DeFi), YieldClub provides an intuitive platform where users can easily earn up to 12% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) on stablecoins, significantly outpacing traditional savings accounts.

The funding round was backed by prominent fintech and crypto investors including Pharsalus, Flex Capital, The House Fund, and Superlayer, with strategic angel investments from proven tech leaders like Kevin Chou (Founder, Kabam), Sam Shank (Founder, HotelTonight), Charlie Songhurst (Former Head of Strategy, Microsoft; Investor), and early Solana contributors.

YieldClub was founded by CEO Mahesh Vellanki and CTO Michael Li, veterans of successful consumer tech companies Rally (creator economy) and Kabam (mobile gaming unicorn, ~$1B exit). Their mission is to demystify DeFi and package its benefits into a consumer-friendly savings product. YieldClub achieves this through a sleek app interface, seamless social login onboarding, and regionally optimized methods for converting cash to stablecoins. Crucially, YieldClub operates on a non-custodial model, meaning users always retain full control over their funds.

“DeFi offers yields far outpacing traditional savings, but accessing them has been unnecessarily complex – often challenging even for crypto insiders,” said Mahesh Vellanki, CEO of YieldClub. “YieldClub changes that. We’ve distilled sophisticated DeFi yield strategies, the kind often used by ‘smart money,’ into an incredibly simple and secure mobile app. Anyone can now tap into significant yield potential in just a few clicks. We essentially built the straightforward, high-performance savings tool we wished existed for everyone, including ourselves.”

YieldClub enters the market at a time when consumers are actively seeking alternatives to low-interest savings options. The platform leverages mature, audited DeFi protocols like Morpho (a top lending protocol) to generate yield on stablecoins (digital assets pegged to currencies like the US Dollar). This offers users exposure to potentially higher returns without the volatility often associated with other cryptocurrencies. The approach is particularly relevant in international markets like Brazil, where stablecoin adoption is growing rapidly.

“YieldClub has cracked the code on making DeFi truly consumer-friendly,” said Auren Hoffman, General Partner of Flex Capital. “Mahesh, Michael, and the team have a rare combination of deep crypto understanding and a proven ability to build engaging products that scale to millions. They are perfectly positioned to bring the benefits of DeFi yield to the mainstream.”

The $2.5 million pre-seed funding will fuel the app’s public launch, expand its range of yield-generating options, enhance partnerships for easy cash-to-crypto conversion, and grow the engineering and product teams. Future plans include launching a debit card allowing users to spend their stablecoin balances while still earning yield, and exploring tokenized stock offerings for international users – all while maintaining the non-custodial promise.

“Think Robinhood, but for DeFi products,” added Vellanki. “We’re applying that same focus on user experience and accessibility to unlock a powerful financial tool previously reserved for crypto experts. We’re putting institutional-grade yield generation into everyone’s pocket.”

YieldClub is available now for preorder on the Apple App Store, with its full public launch set for Monday, June 23, 2025, on both Apple and Android devices.

About YieldClub

YieldClub is simplifying decentralized finance (DeFi) for everyone. Founded in 2025 by consumer tech veterans from Rally and Kabam, YieldClub offers an intuitive mobile app that allows users to easily and securely earn high yields on crypto savings, without needing prior expertise or giving up control of their funds. Their mission is to make the powerful benefits of DeFi accessible to a global audience.

Contact

CEO
Justin Mauldin
Salient PR
[email protected]
7372340936

Photo – https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2715749/YieldClub.jpg

SOURCE YieldClub

Series A fuels launch of Profound Lite and cements Profound as the leading marketing platform
to help brands navigate an AI-first, zero-click internet

NEW YORK, June 19, 2025 — Profound, the platform relied on by marketers to understand and control how they show up in AI responses, today announces a $20 million Series A round led by Kleiner Perkins with participation from NVentures (NVIDIA’s venture capital arm), Khosla Ventures, Saga VC, South Park Commons and SV Angel.

Notable angels joining the round include Guillermo Rauch (Founder, Vercel), Andrew Karam (Co-founder, Applovin), Jordan Singer (CEO, Mainframe), Jordi Hays (TBPN), David Senra (Founders Podcast) and Kevin Wang (CPO, Braze). The funding accelerates Profound’s mission to build a platform to enable marketers to navigate the new “agentic” internet.

AI search has Gone Mainstream, Brands are Flying Blind

ChatGPT recently crossed one billion weekly active users, and more than 60 percent of consumers now start product research with an AI assistant instead of a traditional search engine. Yet most companies have zero insight into what those assistants say about their brand and no idea how to control it.

“In a zero-click world, the conversation between consumers and an AI agent is the new first impression,” said James Cadwallader, Co-founder and CEO of Profound. “Profound shows marketers exactly how chatbots describe their products and gives them the levers to shape that narrative. AI Visibility will become a boardroom level priority for all brands by 2026.”

The Profound Platform—Purpose-built for AI visibility

Features and benefits of Profound multi-product platform include:

• Answer Engine Insights: Shows how chatbots describe your brand, products, and industry
• Agent Analytics: Reveals how AI bots crawl and interpret your website
• Conversation Explorer: Surfaces emerging topics trending in AI search
• Agents: Uses the latest reasoning models to crunch the data and provides actionable insights for marketers

Profound processes more than 100 million AI search queries each month, supports customers in 18 countries and six languages, and already counts enterprises like Indeed, MongoDB, and Ramp among its users. Early adopters report a 25-40 percent lift in AI answer share-of-voice within 60 days.

Introducing Profound Lite—AI Visibility for all businesses

Alongside the funding, Profound is launching Profound Lite, a self-serve plan priced at $499 per month that brings leading AI visibility tooling to startups and small businesses.

“Over the past six months AI Visibility has shifted from a Fortune 500 concern to a must-have for every brand, big or small,” said Cadwallader. “Profound Lite puts that power in the hands of startups and lean teams, letting them see and shape how AI agents talk about them. By 2026 AI Visibility will be the most important category of marketing – and Profound will be the platform that helps brands win.”

Investor perspective

The new capital will expand Profound’s engineering and data-science teams in New York, deepen coverage across emerging AI platforms, and accelerate product innovation aimed at the coming “agentic” internet where websites are built for agentic and human use.

“Profound is the clear leader in a category that will define modern marketing,” said Ilya Fushman, Partner at Kleiner Perkins. “As the web shifts from pages to AI answers, Profound provides the infrastructure every company will need.”

About Profound

Profound is the AI visibility platform that helps brands understand, improve, and measure how they appear in AI-powered search results. Built by alumni of AMD, Microsoft, Datadog, Uber, Bridgewater, and OpenAI, Profound equips marketers to win in a future where AI agents, not blue links, drive discovery. Learn more at www.tryprofound.com

SOURCE Profound