Sony Ventures injects $13 million into Startale Group to support Soneium

Sony Ventures has invested an additional $13 million in Startale Group through the Sony Innovation Fund as a follow-on.

“Startale has been an important partner to Sony since the early days of Soneium. Our vision is to bring the world on-chain, and Sony’s continued support strengthens our ability to deliver the infrastructure required to realize that vision at global scale,” Startale Group CEO Sota Watanabe said in a statement accompanying the Jan. 29 announcement.

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.

With this, Startale’s total disclosed capital raised since its inception has grown to $20 million.

Startale was founded as a spin-off from the Astar Foundation to serve as the primary architect and technical infrastructure provider for Soneium.

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’s OP Stack serves as the underlying framework powering the network.

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.

For instance, Uniswap added support for Soneium in May, while Aave, the decentralized liquidity protocol, was successfully integrated across the network the following month.

Among other developments, Plume, the infrastructure layer for Real World Asset Finance, partnered with Soneium to stream tokenized yields through its SkyLink interoperability engine.

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.

“Through our ongoing collaboration around Soneium, we look forward to continuing to support Startale’s challenges and ambitions going forward,” Sony Ventures Corporation CEO Kazuhito Hadano was quoted as saying.

Sony’s 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.

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.

As previously reported by crypto.news, Sony Singapore also started accepting payments in USDC through a partnership with Crypto.com.