Please note that this is the first monthly edition of Funding Friday and will continue on a monthly basis going forward.

Monthly Recap

2025 started on a strong foot, with January funding rising 5% month-over-month to $938 million from $895 million in December, while the deal count decreased 8% from 116 to 107. Infrastructure was the leading category of January, totaling $628 million in funding across 64 deals, representing 67% of total funding and 60% of total deal count. Although there were only six CeFi deals in January, it was the second most funded category, with $195 million. CeFi's total was helped by Phantom’s $150 Series C round and Sygnum’s $58 million Strategic round, two of the three largest deals in January. In contrast, DeFi was a laggard at the start of the year. It will be interesting to monitor if there’s a shift in funding from DeFi to CeFi projects this year as the regulatory picture becomes clearer.

From a deal stage perspective, approximately half of January’s deals were seed or strategic rounds, comprising about a quarter of total funding. There were four token sales totaling $107 million, including a $75 million raise by Bluwhale, an AI personalization layer, and a $10 million raise by Trump-affiliated World Liberty Financial. January was the third cons...