{"id":20899,"date":"2026-01-29T11:52:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:52:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/sony-ventures-injects-13m-into-startale-group-to-support-soneium\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T11:52:25","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T11:52:25","slug":"sony-ventures-injects-13m-into-startale-group-to-support-soneium","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/sony-ventures-injects-13m-into-startale-group-to-support-soneium\/","title":{"rendered":"Sony Ventures injects $13m into Startale Group to support Soneium"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div class=\"post-detail__content blocks\">\n<p class=\"is-style-lead\">Sony Ventures has invested an additional $13 million in Startale Group through the Sony Innovation Fund as a follow-on.<\/p>\n<div id=\"cn-block-summary-block_6f4c6dbf68839ecdc06a59e957b755f7\" class=\"cn-block-summary\">\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__nav tabs\">\n        <span class=\"tabs__item is-selected\">Summary<\/span>\n    <\/div>\n<div class=\"cn-block-summary__content\">\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Sony Ventures has committed an additional $13 million to Startale through the Sony Innovation Fund.<\/li>\n<li>Startale, a spin-off from the Astar Foundation, supports the development of Soneium, an Ethereum layer 2 built with Sony Block Solutions Labs.<\/li>\n<\/ul><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><!-- .cn-block-summary --><\/p>\n<p>\u201cStartale has been an important partner to Sony since the early days of Soneium. Our vision is to bring the world on-chain, and Sony\u2019s continued support strengthens our ability to deliver the infrastructure required to realize that vision at global scale,\u201d Startale Group CEO Sota Watanabe said in a statement accompanying the <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/startale.com\/en\/blog\/sony-followon-investment\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Jan. 29 announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The latest investment follows a $3.5 million seed funding round in 2023, where Sony Network Communications came in as a strategic investor, and another $3.5 million raised as a seed extension from UOB Venture Management and Samsung Next in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>With this, Startale\u2019s total disclosed capital raised since its inception has grown to $20 million.<\/p>\n<p>Startale was founded as a spin-off from the Astar Foundation to serve as the primary architect and technical infrastructure provider for Soneium.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p>\n<p>Soneium, an Ethereum Layer-2 blockchain co-developed by Startale and Sony Block Solutions Labs, has been designed to unlock on-chain opportunities for the entertainment industry. Optimism\u2019s OP Stack serves as the underlying framework powering the network.<\/p>\n<p>After launching its mainnet in January last year, Soneium has processed over 500 million transactions and currently supports more than 250 live dApps, the announcement noted. It has also formed partnerships with a number of major names like Uniswap, Aave, Plume, and LINE.<\/p>\n<p>For instance, Uniswap added support for Soneium in May, while Aave, the decentralized liquidity protocol, was successfully integrated across the network the following month.<\/p>\n<p>Among other developments, Plume, the infrastructure layer for Real World Asset Finance, partnered with Soneium to stream tokenized yields through its SkyLink interoperability engine.<\/p>\n<p>Last year, Startale Labs also announced the Startale App, which it says will serve as the super-app gateway to Soneium. The app currently remains in a beta testing phase without an official release date.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThrough our ongoing collaboration around Soneium, we look forward to continuing to support Startale\u2019s challenges and ambitions going forward,\u201d Sony Ventures Corporation CEO Kazuhito Hadano was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sony eyes stablecoin play<\/h1>\n<p>Sony\u2019s latest investment is a testament to how the Japanese consumer electronics giant plans to position itself as a core infrastructure player in the web3 space.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Sony Bank, a subsidiary of Sony Financial Group, announced its intentions to issue a U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoin for American customers as early as fiscal 2026. It has formed a strategic relationship with Bastion Platforms in this regard.<\/p>\n<p>As previously reported by crypto.news, Sony Singapore also started accepting payments in USDC through a partnership with Crypto.com.<\/p>\n<p>    <!-- .cn-block-related-link --><\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sony Ventures has invested an additional $13 million in Startale Group through the Sony Innovation Fund as a follow-on. Summary Sony Ventures has committed an additional $13 million to Startale&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17012,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20899"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20899\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20900,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20899\/revisions\/20900"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17012"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}