Funding Roundup: Stripe buys Bridge for $1.1B, Azura bags $6.9M

The biggest deal this week wasn’t a venture capital raise. Instead, it was the announcement that Stripe is buying stablecoin platform Bridge for $1.1 billion.

There’s been a lot written about the deal and what it means, and we wrote about it from numerous angles here at Blockworks focusing on the Solana impact, what it means for crypto and whether or not this could open the door for more merger and acquisition activity.

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, in a post earlier this week, said, “Stablecoins are room-temperature superconductors for financial services. Thanks to stablecoins, businesses around the world will benefit from significant speed, coverage and cost improvements in the coming years. Stripe is going to build the world’s best stablecoin infrastructure.”

Empire co-host Santiago Santos praised Collison’s words, calling the post “one of the best tweets I’ve ever seen.”

“There’s this whole universe and part of crypto that people outside of crypto don’t appreciate unless you’re using it. But very few people are using it because they’re distracted in this noise that crypto is just a casino,” Santos said, talking about stablecoins and their use cases.

But the Stripe/Bridge deal wasn’t the only piece of M&A activity this week. Crypto custodian Komainu — which is backed by Nomura — also announced that it was acquiring Propine, a rival based in Singapore.

The deal amount was not disclosed.

On the funding front, we saw Azura — a DeFi platform — announce a $6.9 million round alongside its launch.

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Notable news:

Shuttle Labs said it raised $6 million to build Genius, a self-custodial crypto exchange. Investors included CMCC, Flow Traders and Anthony Scaramucci’s SALT.
MoonWalk Fitness announced a $3.4 million seed round led by Hack VC. Binance Labs, Flowdesk and Reciprocal Ventures all participated.

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