Crypto-focused venture funding continued to gain traction on 20 August, with on-chain fundraising platform Legion closing a $5 million seed round co-led by VanEck US and BH Digital. Additional backers included Kraken, Coinbase Ventures, Crypto.com Capital, GSR and Bitscale Capital. Legion said the capital will be used to expand its marketplace for tokenised equity and other digital assets aimed at institutional and accredited investors. Artificial-intelligence analytics provider Cointel raised $7.4 million in a strategic round led by the Avalanche Foundation and Japan-based Sugafam Inc. The company, which offers crypto education and real-time trading support tools, plans to use the proceeds to accelerate its North American rollout after establishing an initial presence in Japan. Two smaller transactions underscored the breadth of activity in the sector. TradFi-DeFi bridge StableStock secured an undisclosed seed round backed by YZi Labs (formerly Binance Labs), MPCi and Vertex Ventures, while AI-powered trading terminal o1_exchange collected $4.2 million from Coinbase Ventures and AllianceDAO. The cluster of deals highlights continuing investor appetite for infrastructure that links traditional finance, decentralised finance and artificial intelligence.