July 2, 2024, marked a “funding storm” for crypto projects, with nearly $565 million raised. CoinMinutes summarizes the standout funding rounds over the past 24 hours.
Iris Energy – $413 Million
Leading the “funding storm” on July 2, 2024, was Bitcoin (BTC) mining company Iris Energy with a massive $413 million deal.
According to TheMinerMag, Iris Energy raised this substantially by selling 39.8 million IREN shares listed on Nasdaq from May 15 to June 28, 2024.
In their Q1 report, Iris Energy disclosed a cash reserve of $425.3 million. The company has raised about $714 million in the first half of this year.
Iris Energy plans to use the new funds to expand its operations, aiming for a hash rate of 30 EH/s (exahash per second, a measure of mining power contributing to Bitcoin network security) and an average capacity of around 510 MW.
The remaining cash reserves will be used to scale up equipment and future power capacity agreements and monetize power operations through 2025.
Iris Energy Raised $413M After #Bitcoin Halving$IREN #BTC #Bitcoinmininghttps://t.co/VN2hSo4U72
— TheMinerMag (@TheMinerMag_) July 1, 2024
Sentient AI Platform – $85 Million
Sentient, an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) development platform, raised $85 million in a Seed round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures.
Other investors in the Seed round included Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, Canonical Crypto, and Foresight Ventures.
Sentient plans to launch its test net in Q3 this year. The new funds will help the project continue building its platform. They also plan to hire about ten more researchers and engineers, adding to the current team of nearly 20 in the U.S. and India.
We are thrilled to announce Sentient’s $85M seed round, co-led by @foundersfund with @peterthiel, alongside @PanteraCapital and @hiFramework. This marks a pivotal step in aligning AI development toward a community-built open AGI platform.
Our vision at Sentient is to ensure AI… pic.twitter.com/6KyjjPcRUd
— Sentient (@sentient_agi) July 2, 2024
Lombard Bitcoin Restaking Platform – $16 Million
Bitcoin (BTC) restaking protocol Lombard raised $16 million in a Seed funding round led by venture firm Polychain Capital.
Other investors in the round included Babylon, dao5, Franklin Templeton, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, Mantle EcoFund, Nomad Capital, and several undisclosed funds.
Lombard will use the new funds to develop its Bitcoin restacking ecosystem alongside Babylon, a Bitcoin staking protocol. When users stake Bitcoin through Babylon, Lombard will issue a liquid representative and generate staking returns using the LBTC token to unlock liquidity.
Lombard is excited to announce our $16M seed round to kick-start the Bitcoin restaking ecosystem led by @polychain!
With additional participation from @babylon_chain, @daofive, @FTI_Global, @ForesightVen, @mirana, @0xMantleEco Fund, @NomadCapital_io, @OKX_Ventures, and… pic.twitter.com/QOlsrlQcz5
— Lombard (@Lombard_Finance) July 2, 2024
Pi Squared Zero-Knowledge Technology – $12.5 Million
According to CoinDesk, Pi Squared, a company focused on verifiable computing through zero-knowledge (ZK) technology, raised $12.5 million in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital.
Investors in this round included ABCDE, Bloccelerate, Generative Ventures, Robot Ventures, Samsung Next, and individuals like Justin Drake (Ethereum Foundation researcher) and Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer founder).
Thrilled to announce our $12.5m in seed funding to build universal verified computing for all!
Thank you to our lead investor @polychain as well as @ABCDELabs, @bloccelerate, @genventurecap, @robotventures, and @SamsungNext for supporting us!
We also want to give a shout out… pic.twitter.com/N8ER11L3ys
— Pi Squared_Official (@Pi_Squared_Pi2) July 2, 2024
Led by Grigore Rosu, a computer science professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Pi Squared plans to launch a testnet by the end of 2024 with two products:
- Universal Settlement Layer: Settles blockchain transactions (or “claims”) in any programming language.
- Universal ZK Circuit: Uses ZK technology for “trustless remote computation, AI, and interoperable smart contracts for any blockchain or dApp.”
OpenLedger Blockchain Infrastructure – $8 Million
Blockchain company OpenLedger raised $8 million in a Seed round led by Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital.
Other investors included HashKey Capital, Finality Capital, Hash3, STIX, MH Ventures, Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer founder), Sandeep Narwal (Polygon co-founder), Kenny Li (Manta Network co-founder), and others. This Seed round contributes to the total funds raised by OpenLedger so far.
OpenLedger is building permissionless, data-centric infrastructure for AI development. The company will use the new funds to expand its team and strengthen its data chain infrastructure, aiming to launch its mainnet next quarter.
Glad to announce @OpenLedgerHQ – The sovereign data blockchain’s $8 million seed round led by @polychaincap & @borderless_cap .
OpenLedger addresses the bottleneck of data in AI by making the infrastructure for data lifecycle verifiable, permissionless, and censorship-free!… pic.twitter.com/5mcmOwmNTF
— Openledger (@OpenledgerHQ) July 2, 2024
