Stablecoin issuer Tether has announced its role as the lead investor in Neura Robotics’ recent Series C funding round. The funding round, which raised an estimated $1.4 billion, included Qualcomm, Amazon, and NVIDIA among other investors.

 

 

By investing in Neura Robotics, Tether is extending its influence beyond the digital asset industry, enabling it to deploy some of its core technologies into the humanoid robotics ecosystem. The partnership also enables the integration of Tether’s Wallet Development Kit and Tether’s self-custody wallets into the Neura Robotics system.

 

Through this integration, Tether provides a foundation that enables Neura Robotics to develop robotic systems that earn micropayments for tasks, transact with other robotic systems, and autonomously facilitate transactions and receive payments between machines without human intervention.

 

As part of its partnership, Neura Robotics will collaborate on testing, improving, and deploying Tether’s QuantumVerse Automatic Computer, known as QVAC, into its Neuraverse ecosystem. QVAC is Tether’s open-source, decentralized artificial intelligence platform that enables users to run and fine-tune large language models directly on their devices without relying on cloud servers.

 

“As robotics moves beyond scripted automation and into true autonomy, the infrastructure behind it must evolve as well,” said Paolo Ardoino, chief executive officer of Tether.

 

“Autonomous machines need the ability to process information locally, make decisions, and transact without relying on centralized intermediaries. QVAC brings that edge-first intelligence to the platform while WDK handles the secure financial layer. Together, they enable machines to execute tasks, account for outcomes, and operate independently. NEURA Robotics shares that vision, and this investment reflects our confidence in what autonomous robotics can become.”

 

About Neura Robotics 

NEURA Robotics is a German-based high technology company that positions itself as a pioneer in cognitive robotics and Physical Artificial Intelligence. It develops artificially intelligent machines that can perceive (see, hear, feel), learn, adapt, and collaborate safely with humans.

 

So far, the company has developed some cognitive humanoid robots, including MAiRA, MiPA, and 4NE1. It has also developed Neuraverse, an open ecosystem and platform that enables robots to share skills, continuously learn, and expand their capabilities.

 

 

Deloitte, one of the Big Four professional services firms, has acquired Blocknative, a crypto infrastructure company, in a talent acquisition deal following Blocknative’s plan to wind down its operations.

 

The acquisition is not a full company buyout but rather a transfer of Blocknative’s talent pool to Deloitte, with the former Blocknative team set to drive Web3 innovation across Deloitte’s client portfolio.

 

 

The move, according to Blocknative, is aimed at leveraging blockchain and cryptographic technology to address the trust, coordination, and verification problems that hinder enterprise adoption of agentic artificial intelligence, particularly as several traditional financial institutions, including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley, develop their own agentic AI solutions.

 

“This chapter of our work in the ecosystem is coming to a close: on mempool visibility, transaction orchestration, block building, MEV auctions, private order flow, transaction pricing, and more,” said Matt Cutler, Blocknative founder and chief executive officer.

 

“That work was shaped by our customers, the protocol teams, wallet builders, researchers, and institutions who pushed for better answers.”

 

With Blocknative winding down its operations, the company has announced that it will shut down its application programming interface (API) services on June 19, 2026, alongside its gas network, which relies on the API. Teams and companies that depend on the Blocknative API have been advised to begin migration planning, including testing, swapping, and confirming operational readiness, before the June 19 deadline.

 

The shutdown of Blocknative comes amid a wave of crypto company closures over the past few months. The last quarter saw more than 20 crypto companies restructuring or shutting down due to declining market conditions, high operational costs, and strategic pivots toward artificial intelligence, including Dmail, Balancer Labs, Magic Eden, and Tally.

 

About Blocknative 

Blocknative is a San Francisco-based blockchain infrastructure company that specializes in real-time observability and optimization tools for public blockchains, particularly Ethereum and other EVM-compatible Layer 1 and Layer 2 networks.

 

Before its planned shutdown, Blocknative had raised around 34 million dollars from investors and built a decentralized oracle gas network that provides real-time gas pricing data across more than 40 networks.

 

It has also served several notable blockchain companies, including the Ethereum Foundation, Curve Finance, and Tally.

 

 

Fredrik Haga, CEO and co-founder of crypto analytics firm Dune, has revealed the firm’s plan to lay off a quarter, or 25%, of its staff, citing AI investments as the reason for this decision.

 

 

“We’re restructuring Dune to sharpen our focus around the core data products thousands of customers across the crypto industry rely on. That unfortunately means we’ve let 25% of the team go this week. These are exceptional people I can wholeheartedly recommend. Ping me if you’re hiring top crypto talent,” Haga wrote in a post on X.

 

The decision to lay off some of its staff, according to Haga, is driven by the firm’s plan to accelerate more quickly with AI, with Dune positioning itself as the only firm to have built an end to end stack for crypto data. Its stack performs key roles in data ingestion, quality assurance, storage, cleaning, normalizing, and querying.

 

“With Dune MCP, teams and agents can now build dashboards and workflows without needing to know anything about SQL or data infrastructure and associated costs,” Haga said. Dune Model Context Protocol, or MCP, is an open protocol that allows AI tools to connect to external data sources in a structured way. It automates much of the manual work associated with data use.

 

By cutting its workforce, Dune aims to double down on AI and its end to end crypto data stack, including its model context protocol, which is already being used by some of the industry’s biggest players such as Polygon Labs, 1inch, Base, OP Labs, Blockworks, and COW Protocol.

 

Tech Layoffs Continue to Rise

Layoffs, especially in the tech and crypto sectors, continue to rise. According to a recent survey, about 81,000 layoffs were recorded in the first quarter of 2026, the highest since 2023, with the number reaching more than 100,000 by early May.

 

Several crypto companies have reduced their workforces in recent months. Coinbase most recently cut 14% of its workforce, laying off about 700 employees. The company cited a volatile crypto market and a strategic shift toward artificial intelligence focused operations as reasons for the layoffs.

 

Other companies, including Crypto.com, Gemini, Algorand Foundation, and Block, have also reduced their workforces. Many of these firms have pointed to a volatile crypto market and a broader strategic pivot toward artificial intelligence as contributing factors to the cuts.