Crypto VC Funding Roundup: HIFI Pulls In $37M, Atum Lands $13.5M

HIFI has raised $37 million in a new venture funding round, the single largest deal in this week's crypto VC funding cycle, according to a report by Crypto News. The round anchors a fundraising window that also saw Atum secure $13.5 million, bringing the combined total for the two disclosed deals to just over $50 million.

The HIFI raise stands out for its size. A $37 million commitment in the current market places the deal among the more substantial checks written into crypto-native companies this cycle. Crypto News reported the figure without disclosing the lead investor, the round's structure, or whether the capital arrived as equity, token warrants, or a hybrid instrument — structures that have become increasingly common in crypto venture deals.

Atum's $13.5 million raise represents the second deal in the pair. As with HIFI, Crypto News did not name the participating investors or specify the stage of the round. The relative proximity of the two announcements suggests venture activity in the sector remains steady, with allocators continuing to deploy across multiple deals rather than concentrating capital in a single bet.

The two rounds arrive amid a broader recovery in crypto venture funding. Following the sharp contraction that followed the 2022 market collapse — when quarterly crypto VC investment fell from a peak of roughly $13 billion in the first quarter of 2022 to a fraction of that level — investors have gradually re-entered the asset class. Rounds of $30 million and above, such as HIFI's, were rare during the trough of the funding winter. Their reappearance indicates that institutional appetite for crypto exposure has returned at meaningful check sizes.

What the disclosed figures do not reveal is equally telling. Neither deal came with a stated valuation. In the current environment, valuation disclosure has become a signaling decision in itself: companies that raise at flat or discounted terms frequently withhold numbers, while those commanding premiums tend to publicize them. The absence of valuation data on both the HIFI and Atum rounds leaves open the question of whether these deals priced at expansion terms or at the more conservative marks that have characterized much of the past two years of crypto venture activity.

The funding pair also lands in a market where the geography of crypto venture capital has shifted. United States-based allocators, chastened by regulatory enforcement actions through 2023, had pulled back while funds in Asia, the Middle East and Europe picked up deal flow. The Crypto News report did not specify where either company is headquartered or where its capital originated, so the direction of that geographic split in these particular deals remains unknown.

For founders, the headline numbers carry a practical signal. A $37 million raise demonstrates that nine-figure-adjacent rounds — or at least rounds approaching that threshold — are once again executable in crypto, provided the business case clears investor diligence. The $13.5 million Atum round shows that mid-size checks in the $10 million to $20 million band, the workhorse range for Series A-stage crypto companies, remain available.

For investors, the deals mark another data point in the rebuilding of crypto venture portfolios after the wipeouts of 2022, when the collapse of Terra, Three Arrows Capital and FTX erased billions in marked portfolio value across the sector's largest funds. Deployments at these sizes suggest allocators are moving past the defensive posture of 2023, when many funds concentrated on follow-on support for existing portfolio companies rather than new investments.

The unnamed investors in both rounds remain the story's central open question. Crypto venture rounds of this size typically include at least one institutional lead, and the identity of that lead — whether a crypto-native fund, a traditional venture firm re-entering the space, or a strategic corporate investor — would clarify how the capital markets currently price risk in the sector.

Watch for follow-on disclosure on both deals. Lead investors, valuation terms and use-of-proceeds statements typically surface within weeks of an initial announcement, and those details will determine whether the HIFI and Atum rounds signal a broadening of the crypto venture recovery or remain isolated allocations in a still-selective market.