VC Deal Radar — Week of June 9, 2026

Two publicly announced deals from a16z this week — one a blockbuster crypto infrastructure round, the other a seed from the firm's accelerator program. Sequoia and YC had no new investment announcements in the June 9–15 window.

Digital Asset — Blockchain infrastructure for regulated capital markets Round: $355M (undisclosed stage; growth/late-stage) Lead: a16z crypto (Ali Yahya, General Partner) Co-investors: 7RIDGE, ABN Amro, Apollo Funds, BNP Paribas, Broadridge, Citadel Securities, CME Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, HSBC, S&P Global, SBI Group, Tradeweb, and others

Digital Asset builds Canton, a public layer-one blockchain with privacy controls designed for regulated financial markets. The company has over 700 ecosystem participants and focuses on tokenization, collateral mobility, and settlement. a16z crypto GP Ali Yahya described it as "one of the clearest examples of blockchain product-market fit in regulated finance." 1

This round also marks the start of a formal partnership between Digital Asset and a16z crypto, giving the company access to the firm's policy and research teams as Canton scales. The investment is the largest publicly announced a16z deal this week by a wide margin and among the larger crypto infrastructure rounds of 2026.

Orbital — Distributed AI compute via satellite constellation Round: $5M Seed Lead: a16z (Speedrun accelerator program, via partner Andrew Chen) Co-investors: Basis Set, Human Element, Wayfinder, Antler, Anti Fund, Ascent, and others

Orbital emerged from a16z's Speedrun accelerator in May 2026. Founded by Euwyn Poon — who previously built and sold e-scooter company Spin to Ford — the company plans to deploy a 10,000-satellite constellation delivering one gigawatt of distributed AI compute, once SpaceX's Starship enables commercial payload economics. For now the team is working toward a demo flight to test radiation shielding and thermal management on an Nvidia Blackwell chip. a16z's Andrew Chen cited Poon's track record scaling 250,000 scooters across 100 cities as evidence of operational depth. 2

The bet is explicitly long-horizon. Chen acknowledged a project like this "might take a decade and $5 billion or more," which marks a shift from how a16z historically approached capital-intensive hardware plays.

No new investment announcements from Sequoia Capital (US/Global) for June 9–15. The most recent public investment posts on sequoiacap.com remain Ineffable Intelligence (April 2026, AI consumer / superlearner) and Auctor (April 2026, enterprise AI). 3

No confirmed funding announcements for June 9–15 in which YC is named as a current investor or batch participant. YC's Fall 2026 batch application window was open, but no portfolio company funding disclosures with explicit YC attribution were located in this window. 4

Coverage window: June 9–15, 2026. Only includes deals where the firm is explicitly named as investor in an official announcement or verified press coverage. The Sandstone $30M Series A (June 9) was led by Lightspeed; Sequoia led an earlier seed round in January 2026 — that prior round is out of scope for this week. 5