Crypto VC Rebounds to $3.52B in May, Led by Two Mega-Rounds

Published by James Harris on June 9, 2026June 9, 2026

Crypto VC activity snapped back hard in May, with $3.52 billion raised across 83 rounds, a 408% capital jump from April and the highest monthly total since October 2025. Two deals did most of the heavy lifting: Kalshi’s $1.2 billion Series F and Dunamu’s $670 million strategic round from Hana Financial, which together account for more than half the VC total before you count anything else.

The concentration matters more than the headline number. Roughly 88% of May’s VC dollars went into Series A or later, with early-stage tickets representing a thin slice of the rebound. That pattern tracks with what happened in late 2021 and again in late 2023, when capital returned to crypto after a quiet stretch by flowing first into late-stage and infrastructure plays, where institutional LPs feel safer deploying quickly, and only later filtering down to seed rounds. The Kalshi round is also a reminder that prediction markets have crossed from crypto-native curiosity to regulated financial infrastructure, following the CFTC’s 2024 pivot on event contracts. That regulatory unlock is what made a $1.2 billion raise possible, not just market sentiment.

The Bullish acquisition of Equiniti for $4.2 billion technically dominates May’s disclosed capital at 58% of the $9.57 billion total, but it is an M&A deal for a UK share registrar, which says more about exchange consolidation strategies than about where risk appetite sits.

The exchange category pulling in $946 million across both centralized and perpetual DEX deals reflects something specific about this cycle: institutional desks are building out trading infrastructure simultaneously across CeFi and onchain venues, rather than treating them as competing bets. Coinbase Ventures appearing in both the Coinone and Variational rounds in the same month illustrates that dynamic directly. The AI deal count of 17 rounds leading all categories is worth tracking not because AI-crypto crossover is new, but because the seed and pre-seed volume suggests a second wave of formation-stage companies, which typically means exits and failures will cluster 18 to 24 months out.

Gemini’s $100 million strategic round is the quieter signal here. A US-regulated exchange raising at this stage of the cycle, with stablecoin infrastructure as part of the pitch, fits the regulatory environment post-FIT21 and ahead of expected stablecoin legislation. If that bill moves, the exchanges that already have custody and stablecoin rails in place are positioned differently than those still building them.