This is a weekly feature that runs down the week鈥檚 top 10 announced funding rounds in the U.S. Check out last week鈥檚 biggest funding rounds here.

After a slow week last week, there was a slight pickup in top-dollar rounds, with three hitting nine figures. Health care 鈥� or health care-adjacent 鈥� companies saw big money, taking three of the four top spots this week, with the second place round minting a new mining unicorn. That鈥檚 out of the ordinary, but the venture market has a way of being unpredictable.

1. , $260M, health care: Health care companies hit it big this week and none bigger than Aledade. The Bethesda, Maryland-based company raised a $260 million Series F led by new investor . The round comes just about a year after it locked up a $123 million Series E. The startup provides doctors鈥� offices with data analytics software so they can better manage their patients and identify those most at risk. The company plans to use the new cash to beef up its services and technology, possibly with acquisitions. The new funding deal values the company at $3.5 billion, . Founded in 2014, the company has raised nearly $678 million, .

2. , $195M, mining: What happens when you combine AI with the material needed for lithium-ion batteries and AI? You get big money. Berkeley, California-based KoBold Metals raised a $195 million round this week led by , and included a number of big-name investors such as , and 听补苍诲 -backed . The new cash values the climate-tech startup at $1.15 billion. KoBold Metals uses artificial intelligence to mine for valuable metals such as cobalt, copper, nickel and lithium used in the production of batteries for a variety of sectors, including electric vehicles. The startup has built a database about the Earth鈥檚 layers and uses algorithms to make predictions about where mineral deposits are around the world. KoBold Metals isn鈥檛 new to big rounds. In February 2022, the startup closed a $192.5 million Series B, which included investment from , , BHP Group and the . Founded in 2018, the company has now raised more than $400 million, .

3. , $100M, dental: Dental health startups don鈥檛 usually make this list, but then again they don鈥檛 usually raise $100 million. However, HighFive did just that, closing a $100 million growth investment led by . The Birmingham, Alabama-based company enables a network of dental offices to centralize their operations 鈥� saving money and letting doctors focus on patients and not office operations. The company saw tremendous growth last year, doubling its practice size through acquisitions and organic growth. Founded in 2018, the company has now raised more than $102 million, .

4. , $75M, health care: Yes, another health care startup high on the list. Seattle-based DexCare closed a $75 million Series C led by . The company鈥檚 software helps health systems manage their capacity and appointment booking while getting patients to the care they need. Its platform allows health providers to serve patients faster, and to manage the supply and demand of digital-care access. Founded in 2021, DexCare has raised $146 million, per the company.

5. , $60M, biotech: Only one biotech in the top five this week 鈥� which has become rare, as the space has witnessed some large raises of late. Fremont, California-based Attovia Therapeutics, which is developing biotherapeutics for immune-mediated disease and cancer, raised a $60 million Series A led by . The company plans to use the new cash to further advance its drug and platform development focusing on immunology and oncology. This is the company’s first outside raise, .

6. , $58M, information technology: Lehi, Utah-based Limble, which develops computerized maintenance management software, raised a $58 million Series B led by the . Founded in 2015, the company has now raised nearly $77 million, .

7.听, $53M, biotech: Seattle-based AltPep, which is developing early disease-modifying treatments and detection tools for amyloid diseases, closed a $52.9 million Series B led by . Founded in 2018, the company has raised $76 million, per .

8. (tied) , $50M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based oral medicine developer Empress Therapeutics closed a $50 million round from . This is the company鈥檚 first outside funding, .

8. (tied) , $50M, health care: Long Island, New York-based PM Pediatric Care, a pediatric urgent care network, locked up a $50 million Series E led by . Founded in 2005, the company has raised $64 million, .

8. (tied) , $50M, cloud infrastructure: San Francisco-based Render, a cloud provider for application developers, closed a $50 million Series B led by . Founded in 2018, the company has now raised nearly $77 million, .

Big global deals

Despite the big rounds in the U.S. this week, Asia and Europe both had bigger.

• China-based , a clinical-stage innovative drug research and development company, raised a $500 million round.
• Sweden-based , a battery manufacturer for electric vehicles, industrial systems and energy storage systems, raised a $400 million private equity round.

Methodology

We tracked the largest announced rounds in the SA国际传媒 database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of June 17 to June 23. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

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The $400 million 鈥減re-IPO鈥� deal was in the English-speaking press by Deal Street Asia, which cited reports by local media, which in turn cited unnamed 鈥渋nsiders鈥� at Bitmain. CCN this morning.聽At time of publication, SA国际传媒 News hasn鈥檛 received confirmation from Sequoia Capital or its Chinese subsidiary concerning the round.

The Deal Street Asia report says Bitmain is planning to file for an IPO in Hong Kong in September, and 鈥渆xpects to go public with market capitalization between $30 billion and $40 billion by the end of this year.鈥�

Bitmain graduating to public markets would be a significant milestone for the cryptocurrency industry, which has, so far, been backed mostly by venture capital and initial coin offerings (ICOs) of dubious legality. Obviously, it would be a landmark event for Bitmain too, which has signaled beyond cryptocurrency to another computationally-intensive field: machine learning and artificial intelligence.

This emerges following a challenging week for crypto markets. Bitcoin, the most valuable cryptocurrency by market capitalization, declined twelve percent over the last seven days, as the chart below shows. And the cumulative market capitalization of crypto assets dipped below $300 billion for the first time since mid-April.

Bitmain鈥檚 Public Market Dreams

a report released in February by Bernstein Research, which suggests that Bitmain controls roughly 75 percent of the market for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) designed to mine bitcoin. The bitcoin ASIC market鈥檚 second largest player, , controls roughly 15 percent, and all other producers account for the remaining 10 percent. In addition to bitcoin ASICs (hashing SHA256), Bitmain also manufactures custom hardware for litecoin (Scrypt hashing), dash (X11), ethereum (Ethash), monero (CryptoNight), and other hashing algorithms used by different blockchains.

In May, Canaan Creative filed in Hong Kong to potentially raise $1 billion in an IPO, sponsored jointly by Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank AG, Credit Suisse Group AG, and CMB International Capital, according to another Bloomberg from the time. The report said Canaan, which generated $205 million in 2017 revenue (and nearly $57 million in net income), intends to begin trading in July.

However, Bitmain鈥檚 revenues are an order of magnitude larger. Wu says Bitmain generated $2.5 billion in revenue in 2017. Using chip manufacturers Nvidia and MediaTek as public market comparables, Bloomberg estimated Bitmain would be valued at approximately $8.8 billion on public markets.

But that doesn鈥檛 jibe well with Wu鈥檚 statements, saying that the company was valued at $12 billion. Nor does that public-market comparison agree with new venture funding reports that bubbled up from China overnight.

A Big Fish In The Mining Pools, And Why It Matters

In addition to being the dominant player in manufacturing cryptocurrency mining equipment, Bitmain also runs two of the largest mining pools, BTC.com and AntPool. Collectively, these two pools account for close to 40 percent of the total bitcoin network hashrate, at time of writing.

AntPool was Bitmain鈥檚 original mining pool, and BTC.com (once a web-based bitcoin wallet) was turned into a mining pool following , which was announced in July 2016. In addition to these mining pools, which independent owner-operators of bitcoin mining hardware can connect to, Bitmain also operates Hashnest, a hosted mining service that lets people rent compute cycles on hardware owned by Bitmain.

This is all to say that Bitmain is in a uniquely powerful position in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. As both the largest manufacturer of metaphorical pickaxes, and operator of the biggest mines for the most valuable asset in the space, it stands to profit on both sides of the mining market. And as new bitcoins become ever more difficult to mine, and scarcer in the wake of events, demand for newer, more expensive generations of faster mining hardware will sustain itself so long as it鈥檚 still profitable to play this guessing game.