Lead Bank, the industry-leading bank serving the world’s top fintechs and digital asset companies, today announced the close of its $70 million Series B fundraising round. The round included new investors, ICONIQ and Greycroft, as well as existing investors Ribbit Capital, Coatue, Khosla Ventures, Andreesen Horowitz, and Zeev Ventures. Lead’s post-money valuation is now $1.47 billion.

Gemini has unveiled a suite of new products for over 400 million European Union (EU) and European Economic Area (EEA) investors, including Gemini Staking for Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL), as well as Gemini Perpetuals, our regulated derivatives product. This continues our European expansion as we become the go-to crypto trading destination for European investors after receiving .

Elysian, the AI-native third-party administrator (TPA) for commercial insurance, today announced the closing of a $6 million seed round led by Portage, with participation from American Family Ventures and TenOneTen Ventures. The funding will accelerate Elysian’s go-to-market efforts, support customer onboarding, and scale the company’s delivery operations and technology platform.

Nova Credit, a leading credit infrastructure and analytics company, today announced that PayPal, one of the world’s largest digital payment platforms, has selected Nova Credit’s Cash Atlas® to incorporate cash flow underwriting capabilities across its growing portfolio of consumer credit products.

Antom, a leading merchant payment and digitisation services provider under Ant International, today announced the launch of an agentic payment solution, featuring a first-of-its-kind secure APM checkout solution. Antom is also among the first partners of Mastercard and Visa to pilot card-based transaction capabilities for AI agents.

Elliptic, the global leader in digital asset decisioning, has partnered with BVNK to integrate Elliptic Lens into Layer1, the firm’s stablecoin infrastructure for self-managed payments, enabling financial institutions to embed stablecoin flows with built-in risk intelligence and screening.

Varo Bank, the first all-digital nationally chartered bank in the U.S., today announced the hiring of Asmau Ahmed as the company’s first Chief Artificial Intelligence and Data Officer (CAIDO). Reporting directly to CEO Gavin Michael, she will lead company-wide AI and machine-learning efforts.

Fiserv, Inc., a leading global provider of payments and financial services technology, today announced it has acquired CardFree, an all-in-one platform empowering merchants with customized order, pay, and loyalty solutions. This transaction enhances the capabilities of Clover®, the world's smartest point-of-sale solution, to support small businesses as they grow into larger, multi-location merchants with complex technical needs.