Funding Roundup: Stripe buys Bridge for $1.1B, Azura bags $6.9M

Plus, MoonWalk Fitness announced a $3.4 million seed round

article-image

Sundry Photography/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

The biggest deal this week wasn’t a venture capital raise. Instead, it was the announcement that Stripe is buying stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion. 

There’s been a lot written about the deal and what it means, and we wrote about it from numerous angles here at Blockworks focusing on the Solana impact, what it means for crypto and whether or not this could open the door for more merger and acquisition activity. 

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, in a post earlier this week, said, “Stablecoins are room-temperature superconductors for financial services. Thanks to stablecoins, businesses around the world will benefit from significant speed, coverage and cost improvements in the coming years. Stripe is going to build the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”

Read more: Stripe looks to build ‘world’s best stablecoin infrastructure’ after Bridge buy 

Empire co-host Santiago Santos praised Collison’s words, calling the post “one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen.”

“There’s this whole universe and part of crypto that people outside of crypto don’t appreciate unless you’re using it. But very few people are using it because they’re distracted in this noise that crypto is just a casino,” Santos said, talking about stablecoins and their use cases. 

Read more: Stripe’s $1.1B acquisition: Implications for Solana and crypto VC

But the Stripe/Bridge deal wasn’t the only piece of M&A activity this week. Crypto custodian Komainu — which is backed by Nomura — also announced that it was acquiring Propine, a rival based in Singapore. 

The deal amount was not disclosed. 

On the funding front, we saw Azura — a DeFi platform — announce a $6.9 million round alongside its launch. 

Loading Tweet..

Notable news:

  • Shuttle Labs said it raised $6 million to build Genius, a self-custodial crypto exchange. Investors included CMCC, Flow Traders and Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT.
  • MoonWalk Fitness announced a $3.4 million seed round led by Hack VC. Binance Labs, Flowdesk and Reciprocal Ventures all participated.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Unlocked by Template (7).png

Research

Union’s improvements upon Tendermint consensus through CometBLS, coupled with ZK proving through Galois, allow for a broadly scalable, cost efficient, and low latency IBC implementation that is feasibly scalable across every existing blockchain, virtual machine and runtime. The implementation offers modular crosschain interoperability without the need for trusted intermediaries.  

article-image

35% of admitted teams are building AI apps, while 30% are using stablecoins

article-image

Those in the US who preregistered for the app got $150 worth of WLD

article-image

The L2 chain with opt-in privacy features was eight years in the making

article-image

Bitcoin stands on the shoulders of these Cypherpunk giants

article-image

Unto’s Will Yoo and Liam Heeger spoke to the Empire newsletter about their raise and how they plan to build Thru

article-image

Greater efficiency, William Jevons predicted, would lead to even greater consumption