Morpho raises $50m in VC; DuelNow, Daylight score backing

The crypto startup raised $107.6 million between July 28 and August 3, led by Morpho’s $50 million strategic round and significant investments in DuelNow and Daylight.

It was another eventful week for blockchain startups; according to information from Crypto Fundraising, 19 companies raised a total of $107.6 million.

Leading decentralized crypto lender Morpho has raised $50 million in a strategic round, eclipsing other notable investments including $11 million from DuelNow and $9 million from Daylight.

Below, we take a look at some of the notable crypto investment rounds that have made the news.

Morpho, $50 million

Morpho emerged as the week’s largest fundraiser, raising $50 million in a strategic round led by Ribbit Capital, crypto.news reported. The round also included significant contributions from a16z and Coinbase Ventures.

We are excited to announce that Morpho has raised $50 million led by Ribbit Capital!

Funding from Ribbit and other strategic partners further enhances Morpho’s decentralization and supports its mission to make financial infrastructure a public good. pic.twitter.com/9coxxRKKwn

— Morpho Labs 🦋 (@MorphoLabs) August 1, 2024

What initially started as an optimization layer for Aave (AAVE) and Compound (COMP) has evolved into Morpho Blue, a comprehensive lending protocol with built-in risk management features.

Announcing the results of the round, CEO Paul Frambot emphasized that the new funding will be used to improve Morpho’s decentralization and support its global growth.

DuelNow, $11 million

Another winner of this week’s VC activity was decentralized sports betting platform DuelNow, which raised $11 million in new capital.

The investment was led by GEM Digital Limited, which contributed $10 million, with an additional $1 million from prominent angel investors including Litecoin (LTC) creator Charlie Lee and Dogecoin (DOGE) co-founder Billy Markus.

DuelNow aims to redefine the sports betting industry by utilizing blockchain technology on the Arbitrum (ARB) network and promises a transparent and peer-to-peer betting experience.

Sunlight, $9 million

Elsewhere, Daylight, a project specializing in decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN) for energy distribution, raised $9 million in a Series A round.

I’m excited to announce that @a16zcrypto Leads $9 million Series A funding round @sunlightenergy_! 🔆 Daylight is creating a decentralized protocol for financing and coordinating distributed energy resources.
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Energy is a collection of monopolistic companies that are heavily regulated in the United States today and… pic.twitter.com/gdWX3JbKoh

— Guy Wuollet (@guywuolletjr) July 31, 2024

A16z Crypto led the round, which also included participation from Framework Ventures and others. Daylight said it will use the funding to accelerate efforts to optimize energy consumption and distribution by connecting various energy devices, such as solar panels and electric vehicle chargers, into a decentralized network.

The aim of the initiative is to transform the energy sector by leveraging distributed technologies to deliver more efficient energy solutions.

Hyperbola Labs, $7 million

Artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure startup Hyperbolic Labs Inc. has closed a $7 million seed funding round led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction.

We are excited to announce that we have raised $7M in funding to become the leading Open Access AI Cloud 🤘🏼🌪️

At Hyperbolic, we are building an open AI ecosystem and economy where everyone who contributes is rewarded. Our goal is not to optimize AI performance to compete with traditional Web2… picture.twitter.com/pXTvmK98yO

— Hyperbolic (@hyperbolic_labs) July 30, 2024

The company plans to use the funds to develop its platform, which provides affordable AI computing power by pooling idle GPU resources from around the world.

The team behind the initiative aims to democratize access to AI technology by offering significant cost reductions to businesses and researchers who need high-performance computing.

Other notable investments: Pichi Finance, a trustless points trading-focused protocol, raised $2.5 million in a seed round led by UOB Venture Management, Signum Capital, and Mantle Network. Raad Labs, a blockchain climate technology company, raised $2.25 million to improve climate data measurement via a distributed sensor network. Other companies in this category include companies in pre-seed rounds and unknown rounds that collectively raised $11.1 million.