Institutional Round-Up: AlphaSense Raises $150 Million, Writer $100 Million

The cryptocurrency industry is attracting an increasing number of institutional players. This is reflected in new investments in infrastructure and the growing attention companies pay to Bitcoin as an asset class. The most notable events of the past weeks are in ForkLog’s roundup.

Amazon announced up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic

Amazon announced strategic investments of up to $4 billion in Anthropic. The financing will give the corporation a minority stake in the AI startup.

«Amazon Web Services станет основным облачным поставщиком Anthropic для критически важных рабочих нагрузок, предоставив нашей команде доступ к ведущей вычислительной инфраструктуре в виде чипов AWS Trainium и Inferentia, которые будут использоваться в дополнение к существующим решениям для обучения и развертывания моделей», — говорится в сообщении.

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei. They were among those who left the company amid internal disagreements, including over collaboration with Microsoft.

AI Platform AlphaSense Raises $150 Million at a $2.5 Billion Valuation

AlphaSense closed a Series E round of financing for $150 million. The companys valuation rose from $1.7 billion to $2.5 billion.

The round was led by BOND and supported existing investors, including Alphabet CapitalG, Viking Global Investors and Goldman Sachs.

The team will deploy the fresh financing to expand AlphaSense’s enterprise solution and other products. According to the platform’s founder Jack Kokko, the latest round will help the company stay at the forefront of the generative AI segment for the B2B sector.

AlphaSense is a market intelligence platform for professionals that uses artificial intelligence to collect publicly available information. Its headquarters are in New York, and the company employs more than 1,000 people across offices in the United States, United Kingdom, Finland, Germany, India and Singapore.

AI Platform Writer Raises $100 Million in Series B

The generative AI platform for corporations Writer raised $100 million in a Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth.

Other participants included: WndrCo, Balderton Capital, Insight Partners, Aspect Ventures and a number of the firms clients, including Accenture and Vanguard.

Writer will deploy the funds to develop its own industry-specific large language models with multimodal capabilities.

The platform targets business users and provides a full stack of features for building AI products. Support includes sales, human resources and marketing.

Gaming Blockchain Startup Proof of Play Raises $33 Million

The blockchain games project Proof of Play, founded by former Zynga software development chief Amit Mahajan raised $33 million in seed funding.

The round was led by venture firms a16z and Greenoaks. Participants included former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, Twitch co-founders Justin Kan and Emmet Shear, and a number of other investors.

Proof of Play positions itself as both a game development studio and a technology company.

The startup will focus on developing its first product Pirate Nation, a beta online role-playing game where players assemble pirate crews, battle fantasy creatures and compete with one another.

Web3 Company Bastion Closes Seed Round of $25 Million

Web3 -company Bastion, founded by former a16z crypto executives, closed a seed round of financing for $25 million.

Investors include a16z itself, Laser Digital Ventures, Robot Ventures, Packy McCormick, Not Boring Capital and others.

Behind the project are former a16z crypto information security chief Nassim Eddekiuak and CTO Riyaz Faizullabhoy. They also spent several years at Meta.

Bastion is intended to simplify the process of firms adopting blockchain-based technologies and attracting new users.

The funds will be used to scale operations, hire new staff and obtain additional licenses for further diversification of services.

The intelligent routing system of Bastion determines whether transactions are executed on-chain or off-chain, ensuring scalability and efficiency for enterprise clients.

A16z Crypto Leads Investment Round in Web3 Startup IYK for $16.8 Million

IYK, following a seed round, raised $16.8 million from a16z Crypto and other investors. The startup helps brands create digital experiences for their customers.

An alumnus of the a16z Crypto Startup School was also backed by 1kx, Collab Currency, Lattice Capital, Palm Tree Crew, Synergis Capital, Coop Records and other investors.

IYK enables brands, musicians and artists to create a ce experiences, helping them reward customers and fans and stay connected with their community.

The startups products include an NFC chip that tokenizes physical products and events, including in NFT format. IYK also provides developer APIs and modules for further customization of experiences.

According to the team, since its founding in 2021 the company has attracted more than 100 creators from fashion, music and art. To engage more users, IYK is launching a self-service platform to help shape digital experiences.

Ethereum Explorer Rated Raises $12.88 Million to Expand to Other Networks

Rated Labs, which provides an Ethereum explorer, raised $12.88 million in a Series A to expand to other blockchains.

The lead investor was Archetype with participation from Placeholder, 1confirmation, Cherry, Semantic, Robot Ventures, Chorus One, Factor and Maelstrom.

Total funding for the startup stands at $15 million.

Rated Labs is developing a network Ethereum explorer with an API and Orakl. The company will deploy the funds to expand the explorer to other networks, including Polygon, Solana, Cosmos and Polkadot.

The startup employs 12 people. The project head plans to double the staff in the next several quarters, primarily hiring developers.

Also on ForkLog:

• Blockchain Capital raised$580 million for two crypto funds.
• Binance Labs selected 12 projects for funding.
• Opinion: OpenSea’s valuation fell from $12 billion to $1.2 billion.
• Tim Draper founded an accelerator to support crypto startups.