Nirva, an AI wearable startup, raises $8 million in seed funding On July 9, 2026, AI wearable device startup Nirva announced the completion of an $8 million seed funding round led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from South Park Commons. The funding will be used to advance product development, expand the team, and accelerate the commercialization of its first AI wearable product. Nirva was co-founded by Wei Lyu, former product lead at Meta Reality Labs; Jason Chen, a former Meta engineer; and Hanying Hu, founder of a jewelry brand. The company focuses on AI wearable devices. Its first product is an AI device that can be worn as a necklace or bracelet. It continuously records the user’s spoken content to themselves and, powered by on-device AI models and long-term memory capabilities, helps users generate personal journals, organize their thoughts, and receive personalized suggestions. The goal is to create an AI companion that can accompany users over the long term. Lightspeed believes that future competition in AI wearables will depend not only on model capabilities but also on whether the product is comfortable and aesthetically pleasing enough for users to wear every day, thereby accumulating continuous personal contextual data. Lightspeed noted that consumers already spend billions of dollars annually on health management and mental wellness. Products like Oura and Whoop primarily focus on physical data, while Nirva aims to go further by understanding users’ thinking patterns, emotional changes, and behavioral patterns to build a more complete long-term personal memory. As wear time increases, the device can continuously accumulate the user’s long-term contextual information and deliver increasingly precise suggestions. Lightspeed also pointed out that sustained user engagement, hardware mass production, supply chain management, and building a consumer brand will remain important challenges for the company going forward. From the primary market perspective, AI wearables are emerging as a new focus of capital attention following AI Agents. As large model capabilities continue to improve, more startups are exploring next-generation AI interfaces beyond the smartphone, seeking more natural and continuous human-AI interaction through smart glasses, AI pins, AI pendants, and similar hardware. However, compared with model capabilities, product design, wearing experience, and user retention are increasingly becoming the key factors that will determine whether AI wearables can achieve true mass adoption. Nirva’s funding round also reflects the capital market’s ongoing interest in founding teams that combine AI technology, hardware development, and consumer product design capabilities. #AI# #WearableDevices# #Startup# #SeedRound# #Fundraising# #VentureCapital# #PrimaryMarket# #WAIC# #Fashion# #Design#

Coupang reported a larger-than-expected loss, underscoring the damage from a massive personal data leak that resulted in heavy administrative fines in South Korea, its primary market

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The #L1# narrative has reached a turning point: It’s no longer just about technological superiority. It’s about super apps and stablecoins capturing exclusive commercial scenarios. The latest KuCoin Ventures Weekly Report covers: How stablecoin giants building native chains challenge traditional public chain valuations. Why escalating geopolitical risks and sticky inflation are aggressively compressing risk appetite. The primary market's defensive pivot toward institutional compliance infrastructure. Knowledge is your best asset. Read the full analysis:

Six months ago we shipped StableStock — a stablecoin-funded broker. Fund with stablecoin, buy real public-market stocks. HK and US equities, settlement on-chain, execution at the exchange. In April we launch a new product to HK IPO subscription. Stablecoin holders can now subscribe to Hong Kong primary market offerings. That's the month the thesis stopped being a thesis. → $59.4M total volume. 6× than March. 68× our first month. → $16M AUM, 3x than March, 6.4× since November. → 5000+ Deposit/KYC Users , 4x than March. The pattern showing up the strong demand of stablecoin holders investment in global securities. In the next few months, May–June: → Stricter KYC. We banned 1,030 high-risk accounts on April. Compliance comes before scale, not after. → Margin trading on HK and US equities. → iOS + Android app. Build in public. Next update end of May.

Sowilo, an AI Fashion Startup, Completes Pre-Seed Funding On July 21, 2026, Icelandic fashion-tech startup Sowilo announced the completion of its Pre-Seed funding round. The amount raised has not been disclosed. The round was co-participated by Icelandic venture fund Kría, Dutch investment firm TGC Capital, and multiple angel investors from Iceland and Australia. The company stated that the funds will be used to drive the global expansion of its AI fashion product intelligence platform Catecut and further expand its application within the Shopify ecosystem. According to Dealroom, Catecut has been selected for the Kría Frumsjóður 25 startup program, standing out from 88 applicant companies to become one of the final 11 selected. Sowilo was founded by Heiðrún Ósk Sigfúsdóttir. Its product Catecut is an AI product intelligence platform designed for fashion retailers. Using proprietary AI, the platform analyzes images of clothing, jewelry, and other products to automatically identify product categories and design features, then generates product titles, descriptions, tags, metadata, and SEO-optimized product content. This helps e-commerce merchants automatically create and update product pages, significantly reducing manual data entry work. Catecut is now officially available in the Shopify App Store. Merchants can use the tool directly in the Shopify backend to generate multilingual product content, update both new and existing product pages, and automatically create image alt text and search tags. The company reports that Catecut is already serving U.S. jewelry and apparel retail clients and has completed pilot collaborations with several large international retailers. The new funding will support further expansion into the North American and European markets, as well as accelerated entry into the Asia-Pacific region. From the primary market perspective, AI applications in e-commerce are gradually extending from customer service and marketing into product operations and content management. As the number of SKUs on e-commerce platforms continues to grow, using AI to automatically generate product information, optimize search performance, and improve operational efficiency is becoming an important need for brands and retailers. Sowilo’s Pre-Seed raise also reflects growing capital market attention to vertical AI SaaS commercialization opportunities in niche scenarios—particularly in fashion retail and cross-border e-commerce. #AI# #ArtificialIntelligence# #Fashion# #Tech# #Startup# #CrossBorderEcommerce# #Shopify#

Merkle3s Weekly Recap: US-Iran ceasefire framework lands as oil peaks; Warsh's FOMC debut all but certain to hold — World Cup ignites prediction markets, Hyperliquid SPCX perps hit $1.4B on day one 1️⃣ Macro: Rates Peak, Volatility Persists ➡️ The US and Iran reached a framework to end hostilities, with formal signing set for Friday in Switzerland and the Strait of Hormuz expected to reopen shortly after. Shipments through the strait have already rebounded and supply-demand stays tightly balanced — even if the deal hits a snag, oil likely holds below $90, with diminishing market impact ➡️ May headline and core CPI both came in below expectations MoM. With US gasoline prices falling, May is likely the year's inflation peak, and June CPI looks set to turn negative MoM. Two hikes this year are unlikely — a single cut remains on the table. The case for further upside in long-end Treasuries has evaporated, and the center of gravity will drift lower. This sets up a year-defining allocation window for gold ➡️ The June 18 FOMC is Chair Warsh's first, with markets pricing a 98%–99% chance of holding at 3.50%–3.75%. Watch for dot-plot upward revisions that could rattle sentiment, but any bounce is likely still a topping pattern ➡️ US equities have entered a high-volatility regime. South Korea's KOSPI triggered a circuit breaker last week (opening down over 8%), driven by excessive semiconductor leverage and retail-concentrated positioning. The technical correction looks complete for now, but the underlying issues remain unresolved — a final 10%–15% drawdown can't be ruled out, though this stops short of a bear market call 2️⃣ Prediction Markets: World Cup Kicks Off a Volume Surge ➡️ The 2026 FIFA World Cup (co-hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico — 48 teams, 104 matches) is underway. Polymarket's World Cup winner market alone has topped $1.8B, with 878 related markets collectively breaking $2B — a platform record for sports prediction markets ➡️ Kalshi's equivalent winner contract stands at roughly $121M, about 1/15th of Polymarket's. Still, Kalshi's ~$6B 30-day volume leads Polymarket's $4B; on OI, Kalshi sits at ~$833M vs. Polymarket's ~$486M 3️⃣ Perp DEX: Range-Bound Volume Pulls Back, HIP-3 Share Keeps Climbing ➡️ Crypto traded in a tight range last week, with BTC oscillating between $61,000–$63,500 and overall volume declining. BTC now sits at roughly $65,700, with total crypto market cap at ~$2.25 trillion ➡️ Hyperliquid's HIP-3 (TradFi asset perps) volume keeps rising, reaching as much as 64% of total platform volume within a single 24-hour window. Cumulative equity perp volume has topped $10B. The S&P 500 perp alone has reached $721M in OI, generating over $918K in fees from a single market 4️⃣ Hyperliquid × SpaceX IPO: Price Discovery Narrative Validated Again ➡️ After SpaceX listed last Friday, the $SPCX perpetual on Hyperliquid saw $1.4B in day-one volume, 30% of the HIP-3 total. Pre-listing volume exceeded $450M across 917,000 trades, with OI peaking above $100M ➡️ Hyperliquid's pre-IPO price discovery on SpaceX proved accurate, closely tracking the actual opening price and further cementing the narrative. Unlike Robinhood, Coinbase, and Binance, which saw outages or refunds during the IPO window, Hyperliquid executed without disruption, reinforcing its 24/7 uptime and high-concurrency edge 5️⃣ RWA: The SPCX Tokenized Issuance Controversy ➡️ xStocks issued tokenized SpaceX shares (SPCXx) via Kraken, Bybit, and other platforms, supporting USDC subscriptions with 1:1 real equity backing and no lockup — allocated shares become immediately tradable onchain. This marks an early experiment in tokenized primary-market IPO issuance ➡️ Issues in xStocks' issuance and allocation process hit the vast majority of participating exchanges, leaving large numbers of users unable to subscribe as expected — and community frustration keeps building. The SpaceX IPO was heavily oversubscribed, and retail allocations through traditional channels are expected to be minimal ➡️ The core distinction between tokenized shares and perpetuals has sparked debate: the former carries 1:1 backing with real equity rights, the latter a pure price bet with no voting power. Allocation fairness, instant liquidity vs. stability, and whether retail end up as exit liquidity have become the main points of contention.