September 2026 Crypto Funding Brief
Welcome to our Monthly Crypto Funding Brief. Each month, we bring you the latest activities in the fundraising landscape. This newsletter aims to keep you informed about key developments, significant fundraises, active investors, and upcoming token unlocks, helping you stay ahead in the dynamic world of investments.
In this edition:
- Monthly Fundraising Highlights
- Largest Venture Funding Rounds
- Most Active Investors
- Distribution of Fundraises by Sector
- Digital Asset Treasury Funding Rounds
- Distribution of Fundraises by Stage
- M&A Activity
- Notable Fundraise Filings
- Token Unlocks for September 2026 / October 2026
- Apefluencer Intelligence Digest
- New Projects to Watch
Monthly Fundraising Highlights
In September 2026, 75 crypto companies raised a combined $1.29 billion across 76 rounds, a 49% decline from August's $2.54 billion across 85 rounds, and below the six-month average on both capital and deal count. Of this total, 8 companies raised approximately $342.8 million through PIPE, debt, or post-IPO equity financings.
Sixteen M&A deals were announced, doubling August's total of eight deals. The month's largest venture round was Jeeves' $110 million Series C, a corporate cards and cross-border payments platform backed by CoinFund, Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase.
Largest Venture Funding Rounds
Most Active Investors
The top five investors made a total of 19 investments this month. Their investments spanned multiple sectors, including Artificial Intelligence, Banks, Betting & Prediction Markets, Blockchain Intelligence, DeFi, Payments, Proprietary Firms, and Real-World Assets.
Coinbase was the most active investor this month, with seven deals. Two of the companies it backed, Jeeves and Kaiko, raised among the month's five largest venture rounds.
Unlike August, the top five investors mostly backed different companies. The one overlap was CatchBack, which both Coinbase and Robinhood invested in.
Robinhood also invested in Crypto.com and OG.com, a betting and prediction markets platform. That is the same area where Kalshi made an acquisition this month, buying Oddpool.
Distribution of Fundraises by Sector
Payments led on both capital raised and deal count, $553.5 million across 15 deals (43% of everything raised in September), the first month this quarter in which one sector led on capital and deal count at once. Real-World Assets kept the same pace but found bigger checks, $98.75 million across five rounds (led by Lake Energy's $80 million), after August's five RWA rounds carried just $11.6 million.
Digital Asset Treasury Funding Rounds
Five treasury rounds raised a total of $89.8 million in September, returning to pre-August funding levels.
Four of the five were built on assets other than bitcoin. Evernorth also agreed on September 19 to be acquired by Armada Acquisition Corp., eight days after announcing its raise.
Distribution of Fundraises by Stage
About a quarter of September's capital, $334 million across 19 rounds, came from rounds that did not disclose a stage including two of the month's five largest raises, Payward ($100 million) and Lake Energy ($80 million). Among rounds with a disclosed stage, two Series C rounds raised $197 million, and Seed was the most common, with 15 rounds averaging $8.1 million.
M&A Activity
Sixteen acquisitions were announced in September, double August's eight. Most followed the same playbook, with established firms absorbing crypto-native specialists. S&P Global acquired security auditor OpenZeppelin, Circle agreed to buy cross-border payments platform Tazapay in a $400 million all-stock deal, Kalshi picked up Oddpool, and CoinMarketCap absorbed CoinGlass.
The deals that did disclose terms were sizable. Figure completed its $717 million acquisition of lending platform Kiavi, while MoonPay picked up tokenized-securities broker North Capital in a stock deal reported above $60 million. One headline figure is still provisional. Amaze Holdings signed a binding letter of intent to acquire BullionFX for roughly $155 million in stock, pending diligence and approvals, after a prior $140 million agreement for the same assets fell apart in May 2026. Superlogic, meanwhile, acquired two companies in a single day, including Entravel Group, which had raised $7.5 million from Ethereal Ventures and Finality Capital just six weeks earlier, the quarter's fastest turnaround from raise to exit.
Notable Fundraise Filings
Fourteen fund managers reported about $1.07 billion of new capital through Form D filings in September. The top three alone filed nearly $1 billion, compared with August's largest filing of $125 million.
- Arrington XRP Capital: $534.8 million from just two new investors, taking its 2018 XRP-denominated fund past $950 million raised in total
- Electric Capital Fund IV: $237.8 million across its main and feeder funds, its first reported capital
- Variant Fund IV: $221.2 million from 55 investors, its first reported capital
Deployed capital fell 49% in September while new fund capital surged. That committed money typically shows up in deal counts over the following quarters.
Token Unlocks: September 2026 and October 2026
This chart highlights major token unlocks exclusively for investors in September 2026 and October 2026. Investor unlocks totalled $43.7 million in September, with $60.6 million lined up for October, a sharply rising month, driven almost entirely by two names. LayerZero unlocked $15.78 million on September 20, 2026 with $26.49 million to follow on October 20, 2026, while Ethena's $11.65 million tranche of September 2, 2026 was followed by $18.11 million on October 2, 2026.
Note: figures cover investor allocations only. Completed unlocks are valued at unlock-date price; scheduled unlocks at market prices as of this writing.
Apefluencer Intelligence Digest
The Tie's Apefluencer tool is built on a simple observation: some of crypto's most valuable information exists in the ‘follow’ graph of a small set of Twitter/X accounts who know which founders and projects are worth paying attention to before anyone else does.
Apefluencer tracks the follow behavior of a curated network of ~580 high-signal crypto accounts (investors, funds, founders, researchers, and traders) and surfaces the accounts, projects, and narratives drawing their attention before the broader market catches on.
New Projects to Watch
These are the projects our indicator network has converged on this month, pulled from five automated discovery modes (new projects, stealth risers, signal density, trending follows, and fastest follower growth) and narrowed down through manual review.
The rest of this month's flagged picks:
- @fomoater (fomoater): Fomoater is launching an NFT collection for overthinkers, now inviting users to register for a whitelist raffle.
- @crumbsfamily (Crumbs): Crumbs lets users earn stock tokens for eligible purchases, now live on Robinhood Chain.
- @MarketRushApp (Market Rush): Market Rush offers an interactive browser platform for tracking daily market movements.
- @FedProtocol (Federal Reserve Protocol): Free minting event linked to Federal Reserve monetary policy themes.
- @zecvisions (Zec Visions): Zec Visions is building ZecVisions OS, an NFT desktop environment on the Zcash blockchain.
If you want to explore Apefluencer, reach out to us.