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ChainCatcher news, according to crowdfundinsider, crypto financing increased significantly in the first quarter of 2024, with startups receiving $2.4 billion in 518 transactions. Compared to the previous quarter, invested capital increased by 40.3% and transaction volume increased by 44.7%. The volume and pace of investment is expected to continue to increase throughout the year. Infrastructure startups led the way in funding this quarter, with Ethereum staking platform EigenLayer ($100 million Series B) and fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) development platform Zama ($73 million Series A) raising the largest A funding round. The largest deal of the quarter went to Together AI, a developer of an open source, decentralized cloud platform for large-scale foundational models. The startup raised $106 million in early-stage funding, led by Salesforce Ventures, at a pre-money valuation of $1.1 billion. Median pre-money valuations were $21.8 million in pre-seed and seed stages, $72 million in early-stage and $51.1 million in late-stage, representing year-over-year growth of 85.5%, 148.3% and 7.6% respectively. Deal sizes also reflected rising valuations, with median pre-seed and seed-stage deals of $2.7 million, early-stage deals of $5.0 million, and late-stage deals of $5.8 million, up 24.9% and 25.0% respectively over full-year 2023. % and a decrease of 9.7%.