Crypto and blockchain companies disclosed $292.35 million across 10 funding deals between Aug. 31 and Sep. 5, 2026, with payments and banking infrastructure attracting nearly 93% of the disclosed capital. The largest transaction came from Miami-based Félix, which secured a $200 million financing package combining equity and debt to expand its WhatsApp-based financial platform for Latino customers in the United States.
Félix’s package included an $87 million equity round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from QED Investors, Castle Island Ventures, Switch Ventures, Contour Venture Partners and Endeavor Catalyst. General Catalyst’s Customer Value Fund committed a separate $113 million credit facility. The company uses USDC on Stellar to settle cross-border transfers and works with Bitso to convert between digital assets and local currencies. Félix said it has processed more than $8 billion in transactions across 11 Latin American markets and served more than six million people. The round brought its total capital raised to nearly $300 million, and its valuation has tripled since its $75 million Series B in 2025.
Washington, D.C.-based Cari raised $32.5 million in the first tranche of its initial external funding round, entirely from banking institutions including First Horizon Bank, Huntington Bank, KeyBank, M&T Bank, Old National Bank, SouthState Bank and Glacier Bank. Cari is developing a bank-governed network for issuing and transferring tokenized commercial bank deposits. Its permissioned Layer 2 network is anchored to Ethereum, while participating banks remain responsible for managing deposits. Cari has signed 30 banks and is in discussions with another 40 institutions.
OpenReserve announced a $25 million seed round led by a16z crypto, with participation from Jump Crypto, Acrew Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Wintermute Ventures, Clocktower Technology Ventures, Quona Capital, AAF Management and Zero Knowledge. The company also received preliminary conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency as it works to establish a full-service U.S. national bank built around continuous settlement. It must still raise at least $210 million in initial paid-in capital, secure FDIC coverage and meet OCC preopening requirements.
Diameter Pay added $10 million in Series A funding co-led by CMT Digital and Lightspeed Faction. The Jersey City-based firm provides financial institutions with U.S. dollar virtual accounts, payment rails, stablecoin access and compliance tools through an API, and reported processing more than $10 billion in payments during 2026 before the announcement.
Other disclosed rounds included Firelight’s $8 million seed round led by gumi Cryptos Capital, MemeBitcoin’s $8 million strategic round, GAEA’s $3.6 million strategic financing, and Plenti’s $3 million seed round led by Tether. Below $3 million, ParlayX raised $1.25 million and Ethereum-based DeFi protocol Polaris completed a $1 million angel round backed by contributors associated with the Ethereum Foundation, Fusion, Altitude, Liquity and LI.FI.
Separately, Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said on Sept. 4 that YZi Labs’ recent investments could become some of the firm’s best performers because capital was deployed during the crypto market downturn. YZi Labs manages more than $10 billion across Web3, artificial intelligence and biotechnology, and operates independently from Binance. Zhao wrote: “I strongly believe the YZi Labs investments over the last few months will be some of the best performing because those investments were done during the depth of the crypto winter.”
Publicly identified YZi Labs investments in 2026 include robotics company RoboForce, which secured $52 million; digital asset custodian BitGo, tied to its January New York Stock Exchange listing; prediction market Predict.fun, which operates on BNB Chain and has surpassed $1.8 billion in cumulative trading volume; AEON, which raised an $8 million pre-seed round for AI payments infrastructure; and fixed-rate lending platform TermMax. Bitcoin was trading near $79,945 on Sept. 6, recovering from earlier 2026 lows but still below its prior record, while CZ’s forecast remains an opinion without published valuations or return data.
