Stablecoin infrastructure startup Checker has just raised over $8 million across pre-seed and seed funding rounds to accelerate development of its stablecoin network.

 

The funding round was led by Galaxy Ventures, Al Mada Ventures, and Framework Ventures, with participation from Onigiri, IGNIA, Cerulean, Aquanow, Commerce Ventures, Pharsalus Capital, SNZ Capital, DFS Lab, Breed, Overlook, Velocity, Bitso Business, and AirTM.

 

Other angel investors involved in the round include Stripe, Tala, Flutterwave, Mesh, ComplyAdvantage, and Superstate, among others.

 

 

With this new funding, the Checker team aims to accelerate its global expansion plans while building a credit infrastructure embedded within its platform that allows users to lend and borrow without always having to pre-fund their accounts. The team also plans to automate its operations by building AI agents to handle treasury management, back office operations, and predictive analytics, all aimed at helping the platform scale efficiently.

 

Another goal for the Checker team is to solve the fragmentation problem currently facing stablecoin infrastructure. Despite the growing adoption of stablecoins and tokenized assets, liquidity fragmentation, operational complexity, and compliance hurdles continue to hamper large-scale adoption, particularly among institutions.

 

While institutions have adopted several makeshift solutions to work around these hurdles, such solutions are often difficult to maintain and scale. This is the problem Checker aims to solve.

 

Through its single API, institutions can launch and scale products across trading, payments, treasury, and credit markets. Institutions do not need to worry about integrating multiple providers into their platforms, as Checker abstracts these complex integration processes into a single API connection.

 

About Checker 

Checker is a stablecoin infrastructure startup that allows financial institutions access to stablecoin and fiat liquidity through its single API platform. Its platform currently supports over 75 currencies, supporting over 50 liquidity providers, including exchanges, OTC desks, and banks. 

 

Since its launch, Checker has processed several billion dollars, processing over 43 billion within its first 12 months of operation. It also serves several financial institutions across the US, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, notable among them are Rail, which was acquired by Ripple, and Brasa Bank in Brazil.

 

 

Leading startup accelerator Y Combinator will be holding the first-ever interview session in New York City, keenly focused on fintech builders developing projects around tokenization, stablecoins, prediction markets, and trading.

 

 

According to a YC spokesperson, the New York event will be the first of its kind, as it will focus on a specific sector, with accepted startups joining the Y Combinator Summer 2026 batch, which will begin on June 23 in San Francisco. Once a startup is accepted into the accelerator program, Y Coombinator will invest immediately in the company, even before the summer batch begins.

 

With New York becoming a major fintech hub in the U.S. and accounting for around 30% of all U.S. fintech investment in 2025, while also being home to roughly 1,500 crypto and fintech startups, Y Combinator is making this move to tap into this fast-growing sector and back more startups in the space.

 

Y Combinator Investing in Crypto

Through its funding, Y Combinator has helped support some of the most successful companies in the crypto space, with several reaching and surpassing unicorn status.

 

In 2012, Y Combinator invested about $150,000 into the crypto exchange Coinbase, acquiring an approximately 7% stake in the company. With support from Y Combinator and other early investors, Coinbase has grown into one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world, with a market cap of around $52 billion.

 

Y Combinator also invested early in the decentralized exchange Uniswap, contributing about $120,000 in 2018. Like Coinbase, Uniswap has grown into one of the largest decentralized exchanges, with a valuation of around $2 billion.

 

The startup accelerator has also invested in the prediction market sector, backing Kalshi at an early stage. With support from early investors, including Y Combinator, Kalshi has grown into one of the leading prediction market companies and recently raised $1 billion in a Series F round, reaching a valuation of $22 billion.

 

Other crypto companies that have benefited from Y Combinator’s support include the NFT marketplace OpenSea, blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs, and the Solana-based trading platform Axiom, with all of these companies surpassing the $1 billion valuation mark.

 

 

Prediction market platform Polymarket is reportedly in talks with investors to raise 400 million dollars. If successful, this would place the prediction market company at a valuation of 15 billion dollars, up from its current $9 billion.

 

While there is still no official confirmation from Polymarket regarding this news, the fundraising is expected to drive Polymarket’s growing influence in the expanding prediction market sector, giving it a competitive advantage over its competitors, particularly Kalshi.

 

This move comes a few weeks after Intercontinental Exchange (ICE), the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), invested 600 million dollars into Polymarket. This followed an earlier investment of 1 billion dollars into the prediction market company a few months prior.

 

So far, Polymarket has raised over $2 billion across several fundraising rounds from venture capital firms and investors, including Intercontinental Exchange, Blockchain Capital, Polychain Capital, Dragonfly Capital, Coinbase Ventures, 1789 Capital, Ethereum co founder Vitalik Buterin, Aave founder Stani Kulechov, among several other investors.

 

Prediction Market Firms Grapple With Regulatory Uncertainty

Despite how remarkable the global prediction market sector has grown in recent times, prediction market companies still face several regulatory challenges, ranging from state level lawsuits to nationwide bans.

 

Several U.S. states, including New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Arizona, have taken strict regulatory action against prediction market companies, with many state regulators alleging that these companies offer illegal sports event contracts. At least 12 states in the U.S. have filed civil lawsuits against prediction market companies.

 

Outside the U.S., prediction market companies have also faced strict regulatory scrutiny. Just this year alone, about four countries in Europe, Portugal, the Netherlands, Bulgaria, and Hungary, have imposed nationwide bans on Polymarket’s activities.

 

However, despite this harsh regulatory landscape, the global prediction market continues to grow. In the most recent quarter, global trading volume across prediction market companies exceeded $ 26 billion, a 90 percent increase from the previous quarter. This volume, according to the global equity research firm Bernstein, is expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030.