During the week of October 17th to 23rd, 2026, a transaction in the field of artificial intelligence computing dominated the crypto fundraising and investment scene: The $1.5 billion Series E financing of Tenstorrent accounted for approximately 85.1% of the total $1.7626 billion in funding disclosed that week. Followed by a $200 million financing round for Whop, with smaller investments going towards banking, stablecoin payments, and the infrastructure services provided by AI.

Key Points

• The post-investment valuation of Tenstorrent reached $6.2 billion.
• Sequoia and Shopify Ventures led the Series D financing of Whop.
• Tether invested in Tenstorrent, and took the lead in financing for Mural and Peso.

The total amount of investment and financing in the encryption industry reached $1.7626 billion.

This week's total includes financing announcements, which encompass transactions completed prior to the reporting period. This statistic does not include valuations, cumulative financing amounts, or previously announced issuances.

This transaction list refers to Crypto Fundraising, DeFiLlama, and DropsTab, and has been verified in conjunction with company announcements, disclosures from investors, and reports. Tenstorrent leads in financing related to blockchain, followed by the e-commerce platform Whop.

The Series E financing of Tenstorrent is used for server and chip design.

Tenstorrent completed a equity financing on October 19th, led by Trace Capital and Innovation X. This round of financing raised the company's post-investment valuation to $6.2 billion.

Tether Investments participated in this round of financing along with ARK Invest, Morgan Stanley, Sandisk, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management, and Research Company. Tether confirmed its participation on October 20th.

Tenstorrent indicates that the company will use this funds for the large-scale deployment of Galaxy servers, as well as the development of AI and CPU designs authorized to chip manufacturers. The company has operations in Santa Clara and Austin.

Whop Raises $200 Million for Expansion and Product Development

Whop completed a Series D financing on October 21st, raising $200 million, led by Sequoia and Shopify Ventures. Whop valued the company at $5.1 billion and stated that this funding will be used for international expansion as well as research and development in the areas of payments and advertising.

The platform supports the sale of digital products, subscriptions, software access, and online services, and its stablecoin payment capability connects its commercial operations with cryptographic infrastructure.

The strategic investment made by Tether in February was another deal worth $200 million, at which time the valuation of Whop was $1.6 billion. Only the Series D financing in October is included in this reporting period.

Banks, payments, and smaller-scale infrastructure transactions

Mural Raises $15 Million in Financing to Build Infrastructure for Connecting Banks with Blockchain Payments.

Erebor and Mural

Robinhood Ventures Fund I disclosed its preferred stock purchase transaction on October 21; the transaction was completed on September 17. Erebor provides services for American technology, defense, robotics, artificial intelligence, and digital asset companies.

Robinhood indicates that Erebor obtained a full national bank license from the US Federal Reserve in February and is covered by FDIC deposit insurance. Its deposit scale exceeds $7 billion, and this figure is not included in the total financing amount. Retail investors can gain exposure through the closed-end fund RVI listed on the New York Stock Exchange; these preferred stocks are considered securities, not insured deposits.

Tether led the $15 million Series A financing of Mural, with North Island Ventures and existing investors also participating. Mural announced a cumulative financing amount of $28 million on October 20th.

This New York-based company connects accounts, payments, authentication, and compliance tools. Mural indicates that since its API went live in 2025, the company has processed $2.1 billion in transactions across 128 countries; its clients include Deel and Opera. The funds raised will be used for recruitment, licensing, compliance, and market expansion. Its AI proxy payment control features include expenditure limits, approved counterparties, and audit records.

AI Data, Bitcoin earnings, and automated payments

Dataline raised $10.6 million in a seed round, led jointly by Lattice and Dispersion Capital. Other participants included Coinbase Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Anagram, and Vlad Tenev. This AI, which acts as a data provider, also plans to conduct a separate public token sale, but this is not included in this statistics.

The developer of HoneyB, Nectar Group, raised 5 million US dollars in a round of seed financing, with investors including Portal Ventures, Peer Ventures, and Anchorage Digital Ventures. HoneyB plans to combine Bitcoin collateral with institutional-level return strategies through coordinated custody, credit, and asset management.

Solana Ventures led the $1 million strategic round of Hylo, with Colosseum also participating. This initiative is building a leveraged token, stablecoin system, and revenue infrastructure, which is independent of its previous $1.5 million seed financing round.

X Pay, headquartered in the Netherlands, has received $1 million from 9 investors, including DCI, Credit Scend, Skyland Ventures, and Zerra Ventures. The company uses x402 to implement USDC automatic payments. The funds will be used to expand blockchain support, conduct security audits, build the API market, and prepare for EU compliance.

Tether also led the seed pre-investment in Bolivian fintech company Peso. The deal was announced on October 21st with the aim of expanding USDT payment infrastructure in Latin America. Lighthouse received additional strategic financing for ongoing AI proxy memory and decentralized storage initiatives. Sonic Labs entered into an over-the-counter (OTC) transaction agreement involving approximately 13 million S tokens.

This article was generated with the assistance of artificial intelligence and has been reviewed by an editorial team.