San Francisco-based Meld has raised $7 million in a strategic funding round. The round was led by Lightspeed Faction, with participation from F-Prime, Yolo Investments, and Scytale Digital. Meld builds infrastructure that helps fintechs and developers move money between fiat currencies and stablecoins. Its network connects more than 150 currencies and supports payouts, remittances, and cross-border payments in over 180 countries.

The company said the new capital will be used to expand its sales team, grow the Meld Network, and improve customer support as demand for stablecoin payments continues to rise.

Founder and CEO Pankaj Bengani said stablecoins are quickly becoming a common way to move money across borders. But access is still too complex for many developers and users. He said the funding gives Meld room to make digital assets easier to use inside everyday financial products.

Meld also supports direct access to blockchains such as Ethereum and Solana. This allows crypto-native users to trade and invest more easily. The company works with products like Uniswap, Phantom, and MetaMask to enable fast cross-border access while staying compliant.

Lightspeed Faction deal partner Will Leas said moving smoothly between fiat and crypto is no longer optional. As stablecoins gain traction in global payments, he believes Meld is well positioned to support developers and merchants across major markets.

Meld currently works with more than 50 partners around the world. Including this round, the company has raised $15 million to date.

New York-based Project Eleven has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round. The round was led by Castle Island Ventures, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Fin Capital, Variant, Quantonation, Nebular, Formation, Lattice Fund, Satstreet Ventures, Nascent Ventures, and Balaji Srinivasan.

The funding comes as governments and companies start to plan for a future where quantum computers could break today’s cryptography. Many blockchains, including Bitcoin, rely on encryption methods that may not hold up once quantum systems mature. These networks protect trillions of dollars and move slowly by design, making upgrades hard to rush.

Project Eleven is building tools to help networks and institutions prepare early. This includes readiness checks, testing environments, and step-by-step plans to move safely to post-quantum systems over time.

CEO and co-founder Alex Pruden said the risk is real, even if it feels far off. He explained that major blockchains take years to change, so waiting until quantum threats are urgent would force rushed decisions. The company wants teams to prepare calmly, not react under pressure.

Castle Island Ventures general partner Nic Carter said quantum computing is the biggest technical threat public blockchains have faced so far. He believes Project Eleven is helping turn years of research into tools that can actually be used in production systems.

Project Eleven is already working with the Solana Foundation and other Layer 1 blockchain teams on early planning and technical efforts. The company previously raised a $6 million seed round in June 2025, led by Variant and Quantonation

The startup plans to roll out its next major product in early 2026. It will focus on institutions, protocols, and users that want their systems to stay secure for decades.

Erebor Bank got a lot of money three hundred and fifty million dollars from some people who want to help them. This was led by Lux Capital. Now Erebor Bank is worth four billion and thirty five million dollars. They want to do things for people who work with technology, defense and cryptocurrency which is what Erebor Bank is going to do for their tech clients their defense clients and their crypto clients.

Erebor Bank is a company that helps businesses in Silicon Valley. They just got a lot of money 350 million dollars, from people who want to invest in them. This means that Erebor Bank is now worth about 4.35 billion dollars. Some big investors like Lux Capital gave them this money. Other investors, like Founders Fund, 8VC and Haun Ventures also put in some money. I found this out from Axios. Erebor Bank got a lot of money because these investors believe in Erebor Bank and want to help them grow.

The bank got the okay from the FDIC for insurance on deposits. They also got an approval to become a national bank from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in October. Erebor is trying to help out tech companies because some of them were left hanging when Silicon Valley Bank closed down in 2023. Erebor wants to serve tech companies and also provide services to the defense industry and the aerospace industry. The bank really wants to fill the gaps that were left when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed. Erebor is about serving tech companies and other industries, like defense and aerospace.

The people in charge said that the money they got will help the bank do things and give better services to the people who use the bank. The people who gave the bank money think it is an idea that Erebor is working with companies that make new technology and things, for defense. Erebor is really focusing on these kinds of companies and the people who gave the bank money like that.

About the company: Erebor Bank provides banking services for technology, defense, and aerospace firms. It focuses on Silicon Valley businesses and clients in the U.S. It recently received regulatory approvals to operate as a national bank.

Crown raised $13.5 million in Series A funding. Paradigm led the round. This is Paradigm’s first deal in Brazil. The investment values Crown at nearly $90 million. It follows an $8.1 million seed led by Framework Ventures with Valor Capital Group, Coinbase Ventures, Paxos, and Nubank co-founder Edward Wible.

Paradigm backs Crown’s BRLV stablecoin pegged to the Brazilian real. It’s backed by liquid government bonds for safety. The coin has R$360 million in subscriptions from institutions. Crown calls it the largest emerging market stablecoin.
The funds speed growth and adoption of BRLV for firms, funds, and big users. It offers liquidity like Tether or Circle.

No direct comments from Crown executives or investors in the source. Edward Wible from Nubank joins the board from the seed.
Crown builds a Brazilian real stablecoin for institutions. BRLV targets corporations and funds in Latin America. The Brazil-based fintech focuses on secure digital assets compliant with regs.

SimpleClosure, founded in 2023, has raised just over $20 million from investors including Infinity Ventures, TTV Capital, Anthemis, The LegalTech Fund, and Carta. The company's founder and CEO, Dori Yona, came up with the concept after experiencing the complexity of shutting down a company.

SimpleClosure is expanding its vision with the launch of Asset Hub, a marketplace designed to help founders recover value from their assets, such as source code, operational data, domain names, and equipment.

According to Yona, the company has seen strong year-over-year growth in startup shutdown activity, with 2.6x more companies closing in Q1 2026 compared to Q1 2025. The Asset Hub aims to capture the value of these assets, which often evaporate during the shutdown process.

X-energy has raised over $1 billion in capital investment through its IPO and a simultaneous private investment.

This funding will be used to hasten the placement of its Xe-100 advanced small modular reactors as the world searches for clean, sustainable baseload power.

The Xe-100 reactor utilises "pebbles", graphite spheres containing thousands of "TRISO" particles, which are essentially indestructible and capable of withstanding high temperatures.

X-energy intends to use the proceeds to fund the final stages of licensing, supply chain development, and the construction of its TRISO-X fuel fabrication facility.

The company is currently managing a pipeline of over 11 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity through various commercial partnerships, including a project with Dow Inc. to provide high-temperature steam and power for industrial processes.

Cloneable, a startup that uses AI to shadow human experts in heavy industries such as energy and replicate their specialized workflows into autonomous agents, has raised $4.6 million in seed funding. Congruent Ventures led the raise, which included participation from First In, Overline, Bull City Venture Partners, and St. Elmo Venture Capital.

The idea for Cloneable traces back to a bottleneck its founders encountered years earlier while working in the field. The startup's founders realized that heavy industries face a “knowledge crisis” as experienced workers retire faster than they can be replaced.

Cloneable aims to capture and preserve that kind of institutional knowledge. The funding will also support expansion into infrastructure-heavy industries such as public utilities, vegetation management, construction, rail, mining, agriculture, and manufacturing.

The company claims that a process that typically takes a human engineer eight hours can be completed by a Cloneable agent in under two minutes.