Institutional Round-up: Mythical Games raises $37 million, and Bitpanda Pro €30 million

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

Inflection AI startup raises $1.3 billion from Nvidia and other investors

The AI chatbot Pi-backed startup Inflection AI raised $1.3 billion from investors, including Microsoft and Nvidia.

Co-founders of Microsoft Bill Gates, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt also contributed to the funding round.

According to Reuters, the startup was valued at $4 billion. The total raised funds amounted to $1.5 billion.

Inflection AI said the funding will support further efforts to develop the first product – the Pi chatbot. It is designed to generate \”uninhibited conversations\” and can ask counter questions.

Web3 game developer Mythical Games raises $37 million

The Web3 company Mythical Games closed a Series C1 round of $37 million led by Scytale Digital.

Other participants included ARK Invest, Animoca Brands, PROOF, Stanford Athletics and MoonPay, as well as current backers such as Andreessen Horowitz, WestCap, Gaingels, Signum Growth and Struck Capital.

The raised funds will go toward scaling its games and expanding its audience.

Bitpanda Pro raises €30 million and spins off into a separate business

The crypto trading platform Bitpanda Pro has become a standalone brand under One Trading. The entity closed a Series A round of €30 million led by Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures. MiddleGame Ventures, Speedinvest, Keyrock and Wintermute Ventures also participated in the round.

The parent Bitpanda will retain an undisclosed stake in the business. Unlike the former subsidiary, which was aimed at professional and institutional traders, the firm will continue to focus on retail users.

One Trading positions itself as a MiFID-compliant trading platform licensed as a virtual asset service provider. The structure is ready to offer \”capital-efficient spot and derivatives products\” to a broad range of clients.

Twitter alternative by Jack Dorsey raises $8 million

Bluesky — a decentralized alternative to Twitter, backed by co-founder and former CEO of the social network Jack Dorsey — closed an $8 million seed round.

It was led by Neo with participation from Red Hat co-founder Bob Young, Kubernetes developer Joe Beda, Replit founder Amjad Masad, and others.

The raised funds will be used to expand the team, cover operating costs and infrastructure, and to develop the AT Protocol on which the platform operates.

Bluesky also announced the first paid feature — a personal domain as a username. To this end, the social network struck a partnership with Namecheap, a domain registrar.

Binance Labs invested $4 million in the Web3Go startup

The data analytics network startup Web3Go raised $4 million in a seed round led by Binance Labs.

Participants in the round included Hashkey Capital, NGC, Shima Capital, IVC, LIF, Big Brain Holdings and Archerman Capital.

The team offers a set of AI-enabled tools for creating digital assets and real-time data processing infrastructure on a blockchain basis.

The raised funds will be used to rebrand to Web3Go DIN (Data Intelligence Network) and further develop the project.

Privacy-focused Ola startup raises $3 million

The privacy-focused Web3 startup Ola raised $3 million in a seed funding round. It was led by Web3.com Ventures and Foresight Ventures with participation from Token Metrics Ventures, LD Capital and Catcher VC.

\”Our ultimate goal is to make privacy a fundamental right in the digital age, especially for Web3 users,\” said Ola CEO Oushen Chen.

The startup plans to run a beta network test in the third quarter of 2023. After that, a public testnet will be launched. The mainnet, according to the project’s roadmap, is expected to go live in Q1 2024.

Also on ForkLog:

• Study: the volume of venture deals in the crypto industry in June fell by 71%.