Crypto funding surges in Q1 2024, with startups raising $2.4 billion in 518 deals

According to PitchBook data, in the first quarter of 2024, cryptocurrency financing increased significantly, with startups raising $2.4 billion in 518 transactions. This means that compared with the previous quarter, the investment capital increased by 40.3% and the transaction volume increased by 44.7%. In addition, infrastructure startups took the lead in financing this quarter, with the largest rounds raised by Ethereum re-staking platform EigenLayer ($100 million in Series B) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) development platform Zama ($73 million in Series A). The report pointed out that the largest deal this quarter came from Together AI, a developer of an open source, decentralized cloud platform for large-scale basic models, which raised $106 million in early financing led by Salesforce Ventures at a pre-investment valuation of $1.1 billion. It is worth noting that the median pre-money valuation for pre-seed/seed rounds was $21.8 million, $72 million for early-stage rounds, and $51.1 million for late-stage rounds, up 85.5%, 148.3%, and 7.6% year-over-year, respectively. Deal size also reflects the rise in valuations, with the median financing for pre-seed/seed rounds being $2.7 million, $5 million for early-stage rounds, and $5.8 million for late-stage rounds, up 24.9%, 25.0%, and 9.7% year-over-year, respectively. (Crowdfundinsider)