48 rounds and $1.05bn in September 2026, below the $2.01bn average month of the preceding year.
Section 1 The month in figures
Every figure on this page comes from DefiLlama's funding rounds database and is computed by the same rules in every issue. Amounts are over the 39 rounds with a disclosed figure; counts are over all 48.
Section 2 What the market is doing
A single month turns on whether one large round happened to close in it. The line through the bars is the twelve-month average, and it is the one to read for direction. It stands at $1.82bn a month, below the $2.22bn it read at the start of this window.
Fundraising is seasonal, so September is set against September in earlier years as well as against the months either side of it. Of the eight on record, this one ranks 4th by capital raised; the largest was 2025 at $3.25bn.
Section 3 Anomaly checks
Every issue runs the same checks over the month's rounds, looking for a single round dominating the month's total, many rounds announced at one identical amount, gaps in what the source discloses, deal count, capital and round size far from their recent norm, a sector or an investor running well above its own rate and the same round listed twice by the source. Anything a check finds is written up here. The checks and the levels that trigger them are listed under Method, so a reader can see what was looked for as well as what was found.
Four anomalies found in September 2026. Each one below names what was measured and the figure that triggered it.
Deal count. Deal count is 0.72x its twelve-month average. 48 rounds against an average month of 66.8 over the preceding year.
Data recency. This month is reported close to the edge of the data. The latest round on record anywhere in the source is dated 29 Sep 2026, 1 day before the end of the month. Rounds are listed some days after they are announced and the largest tend to arrive last, so these figures are more likely to rise than fall.
Round size. The median round rose to $10m. Against $7.0m over the preceding twelve months. A median moves when the population changes, not only when prices do. Read it beside the round count and against any run of identical amounts this month.
Sector activity. One sector ran above its own rate. Stablecoin Infrastructure booked 7 rounds against a 1.6 monthly average.
Section 4 Where the capital concentrated
The largest round is 19% of the month's capital, the largest five 57%, the largest ten 77%. The steeper this curve runs, the more of the month sits in a few rounds.
Section 5 How large the rounds were
39 rounds carry a disclosed amount, running from $1.0m to $200m, with a median of $10m. The largest group of rounds sharing one amount is four, 10% of those disclosed.
Section 6 How much a round raises, by stage
Each band is the amount raised in the round, by stage, over the trailing twelve months. Twelve months is the window that holds a band steady when one month or one deal is unusual. Every stage row carries two counts: the rounds behind its band over those twelve months, and the rounds announced this month. The rust dots are those rounds, 31 of them, each placed at what it raised. The source records a stage for 31 of this month's 39 disclosed rounds. The remaining 8 are counted in every other figure on this page and carry no stage to place them on. Series A rose 38% to $16.6m on 86 rounds. Strategic rose 33% to $8.0m on 90 rounds.
Section 7 Who led and who joined
Rounds led and rounds joined are counted separately over the trailing twelve months. An investor that leads sets the round's terms; one that joins takes them. YZi Labs led the most at 36, at a median led round of $0.50m.
Section 8 Which sectors were active
Each sector's count for the month against its own average month over the preceding year, so a large sector is not read as an active one. One sector ran at 2.5x that rate or more.
Section 9 The largest rounds
The six largest rounds of September 2026 by amount raised, ties broken alphabetically. 48 rounds were recorded in total, of which 39 disclosed an amount; the rest are counted in every figure on this page but are not listed individually. Each company description below is DefiLlama's own text, reproduced without edit.
Felix Pago
WhatsApp-based financial platform for U.S. Latinos that uses AI and stablecoin settlement infrastructure for cross-border remittances and is expanding into lending, savings and other financial services
Jeeves
Jeeves provides corporate cards, cross-border payments, accounts payable, treasury payments, and spend-management infrastructure for global businesses, increasingly using stablecoins as its settlement rail
Payward
Parent company of Kraken operating crypto and multi-asset trading, payments, custody and tokenized-asset infrastructure
Circle
Stablecoin and blockchain financial infrastructure company that issues USDC and provides payments, settlement and blockchain infrastructure for digital-dollar transactions
Raven
Raven is a proprietary trading and market-making firm providing systematic liquidity across crypto spot, perpetual, and prediction markets on centralized, decentralized, regulated, and on-chain venues
Kaiko
Institutional digital-asset data provider offering market data, pricing, indices, analytics and onchain data infrastructure for crypto and tokenized financial markets
Section 10 Method, thresholds and sources
Data by DefiLlama. This report is built on data published by DefiLlama, which maintains the funding rounds database it reads and makes it open. We thank them for that work: the round records, the amounts, the investor lists and the sector taxonomy behind every chart on this page are theirs, gathered and kept current at their cost. Anyone who wants the underlying records rather than our reading of them should go to defillama.com/raises, which is free to use and more detailed than any monthly summary. FinDaS adds the normalisation, the twelve-month baselines and the checks in Section 3, and nothing else.
Section 3 is produced by the tests below and by nothing else. Each runs against every issue; a test that does not clear its threshold prints nothing. The thresholds are published here because a threshold a reader cannot see is indistinguishable from an opinion.
| What is checked | It is reported when | Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Largest round's share of the month | ≥ 30% | not reported |
| Largest five rounds' share | ≥ 60% | not reported |
| Rounds at one identical amount, as a share of disclosed rounds | ≥ 15% and ≥ 3 rounds | not reported |
| Rounds with no disclosed amount | ≥ 25% | not reported |
| Rounds carrying a stage | < 70% | not reported |
| Days the source reaches past the month end | < 7 days | reported |
| Deal count against its trailing-12 monthly average | ≥ 1.25x or ≤ 0.75x | reported |
| Capital against its trailing-12 monthly average | ≥ 2.00x or ≤ 0.50x | not reported |
| Month median against the trailing-12 median | ≥ 40% either way | reported |
| A sector's count against its own monthly average | ≥ 2.5x and ≥ +4 rounds, on a baseline of 1.5+ | reported |
| Rounds led by one investor inside the month | ≥ 5 | not reported |
| One company listed twice with the same stage and amount | ≥ 1 in the month | not reported |
Series continuity. Issues up to and including March 2026 were compiled from Token Terminal and Crunchbase. The whole series has since been restated on DefiLlama alone so that figures are comparable across months.
How the figures are computed. Each round is counted once, in the month it was announced. Amounts are computed over rounds with a disclosed figure and counts over all rounds, and both denominators are stated wherever a figure is given. Round stage is normalised from the source's own label; rounds with no stage are excluded from the stage figures rather than assigned one. Medians and interquartile ranges are used throughout. Baselines never include the month they judge.
On valuation. Earlier issues reported a median round valuation. Fewer than one round in ten discloses one, so that median rested on a handful of observations and moved on sampling noise rather than on the market. It has been withdrawn.
Known bias. The source skews toward rounds with large disclosed investors and toward the United States. Largely unregistered token sales are under-represented. Rounds are listed some days after they are announced and the largest tend to arrive last, so a recent month is more likely to rise than fall.
Not investment advice. This report describes rounds that were announced and the ratios between them. Nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any asset. © FinDaS. Unauthorised reproduction or distribution, in whole or in part, is prohibited.
