Funding Roundup: Celestia’s raised $155M

The biggest raise this week came from Celestia. It announced a $100 million round led by Bain Capital Crypto, with participation from 1kx, Syncracy Capital, Placeholder and Robot Ventures. 

The $100 million has brought the “project’s total amount raised to $155 million,” per a press statement. 

“When Celestia launched last year as the first modular data availability layer, it scaled blockspace from the dial-up era to the broadband era,” said Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia and chair of the Celestia Foundation.

Read more: Celestia, the first modular data availability network, launches on mainnet

“Now, the core developers have introduced the technical roadmap to scale blockspace to the fiber optic era — while keeping it verifiable and low latency.”

A16z made some waves this week as well, announcing its first investment into a decentralized science investment. 

The project, AminoChain, announced a $5 million seed round which was — of course — led by Andreessen Horowitz. 

“We believe that blockchain technology has the potential to revolutionize almost any industry where transparency, security, and ownership are core and presents a tremendous opportunity to accelerate progress in healthcare and science,” said Arianna Simpson, an a16z general partner investing in Web3. 

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks' cells were taken without her knowledge or consent. Her cells, known now as “HeLa” cells, went on to become one of the most important tools in modern medicine, leading to breakthroughs in healthcare from the polio vaccine to cancer treatments. For 72… pic.twitter.com/01tZme6gLL

— AriannaSimpson.eth (@AriannaSimpson) September 25, 2024

According to its funding announcement — which also served as the project coming out of stealth — AminoChain seeks to give patients who donate bio-samples “the transparency to finally know what is happening with their donations to society.”

Read more from our opinion section: We need to decentralize science

The project is a “technology that connects enterprise medical institutions and on which healthcare applications can be built,” AminoChain said.

Other notable rounds: 

• Polymarket is reportedly mulling the raise of more than $50 million in new capital, per The Information.
• Initia announced a $14 million Series A led by Theory Ventures, with participation from Delphi Ventures and HackVC, among others. 
• Mawari Network said it raised over $10 million in strategic funding in a round led by Borderless, 1kx and Antfield. 
• Daylight announced a $6 million round led by Union Square Ventures and 1kx. Framework Ventures and Chapter One also participated in the round.

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