Funding Roundup: Celestia’s raised $155M
Meanwhile, a16z announced its first raise for a decentralized science (DeSci) project
Ruslan Lytvyn/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks
The biggest raise this week came from Celestia. It announced a $100 million round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from 1kx, Syncracy Capital, Placeholder and Robot Ventures.
The $100 million has brought the “project’s total amount raised to $155 million,” per a press statement.
“When Celestia launched last year as the first modular data availability layer, it scaled blockspace from the dial-up era to the broadband era,” said Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia and chair of the Celestia Foundation.
Read more: Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet
“Now, the core developers have introduced the technical roadmap to scale blockspace to the fiber optic era — while keeping it verifiable and low latency.”
A16z made some waves this week as well, announcing its first investment into a decentralized science investment.
The project, AminoChain, announced a $5 million seed round which was — of course — led by Andreessen Horowitz.
“We believe that blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize almost any industry where transparency, security, and ownership are core and presents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate progress in healthcare and science,” said Arianna Simpson, an a16z general partner investing in Web3.
According to its funding announcement — which also served as the project coming out of stealth — AminoChain seeks to give patients who donate bio-samples “the transparency to finally know what is happening with their donations to society.”
Read more from our opinion section: We need to decentralize science
The project is a “technology that connects enterprise medical institutions and on which healthcare applications can be built,” AminoChain said.
Other notable rounds:
- Polymarket is reportedly mulling the raise of more than $50 million in new capital, per The Information.
- Initia announced a $14 million Series A led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Delphi Ventures and HackVC, among others.
- Mawari Network said it raised over $10 million in strategic funding in a round led by Borderless, 1kx and Antfield.
- Daylight announced a $6 million round led by Union Square Ventures and 1kx. Framework Ventures and Chapter One also participated in the round.
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