From May 16 to May 23, 2026, the cryptocurrency and fintech market recorded 26 investment deals, 17 of which disclosed financial details totaling $400.5 million. The largest investment volume was attracted by the prediction platform Kalshi.
This is reported by Business • Media
Key Venture Rounds and Funding
Kalshi raised $200 million from Baillie Gifford, complementing a recent round of $1 billion, although specific investment details remain undisclosed. Variational, a protocol for trading derivatives, secured $50 million in Series A from investors such as Coinbase Ventures, Dragonfly, and Bain Capital Crypto, planning to integrate liquidity from traditional markets into blockchain infrastructure.
SignalPlus, specializing in crypto options and risk management, received $40 million from Hashkey Capital for global expansion. Catena Labs raised $30 million to develop AI-based Web3 projects and digital communications, with investments from Coinbase Ventures, a16z crypto, IDG Capital, and others.
Among other notable deals are Eisen ($18.5 million for automating compliance in fintech), Nof1 ($15 million for launching AI models in trading), Checker ($8.1 million for stablecoin liquidity), AEON.xyz ($8 million for creating payment infrastructure for AI agents), Cycles ($6.4 million for a stablecoin settlement protocol), Foundation Devices ($6.4 million for developing Bitcoin wallets), Sorted Wallet ($4.4 million for emerging markets), IOTrader ($3.8 million for a derivatives protocol), Aryze ($3.48 million for payment solutions), DAOKraft ($3.4 million for DAO analytics), Tomoland ($2 million for Web3 content), and AISIM ($1 million for eSIM communications and AI services).
“From May 16 to May 23, 2026, 26 investment deals were recorded. Of these, 17 disclosed details with a total financial influx of $400.5 million. The leader in funds raised was the prediction platform Kalshi.”
Additionally, some projects reported raised funding without disclosing details. Temple closed a strategic round with SBI Holdings to develop institutional trading infrastructure on the Canton Network. SizeProp received investments from Igloo to expand access to perpetual contract trading, while LemFi received funding from Tether to develop multi-currency services.
Mergers and Acquisitions Market
Last week, six M&A deals were concluded. Among them is the acquisition of the Zodia Custody platform by Standard Chartered Bank, which will strengthen its position in the crypto asset custody market. Deloitte announced the purchase of Blocknative to integrate blockchain transaction monitoring tools into its own structure.
The company Zama acquired TokenOps to expand solutions in vesting automation and confidential token distributions. Tether became the sole owner of Twenty One Capital at SoftBank, planning further development of Bitcoin infrastructure. Kaiko acquired the gaming platform Cometh to enhance its regulated on-chain analytics and Web3 gaming direction. MoonPay acquired Decent to create a unified API for operations across over 200 blockchains.
Trends and Venture Market Activity
No investment deals were recorded in the corporate sector, and there were also no new deals in accelerators, grants, and DAO funding this week. Activity in token sales was absent.
The most active venture investor was Coinbase Ventures, which made four deals. Following in the number of investments are a16z crypto and Tether (three deals each), as well as Sequoia Capital and HashKey Capital.
The main areas of interest for investors remain DeFi projects, blockchain services, CeFi, and infrastructure sectors. This is confirmed by data from the previous week — from May 9 to May 16, 25 investment deals were made totaling $1.56 billion.
