Sony has made a fresh investment in Startale Group, deepening a partnership that underpins the technology giant’s push into blockchain-based entertainment and payments.
Startale said Thursday it received an additional $13 million from Sony Innovation Fund at the first close of its Series A. The fund will be used to expand Sony’s Soneium blockchain and related “onchain entertainment infrastructure” — spanning creator and IP-led applications, consumer distribution and a payments/settlement layer.
The follow-on backing comes roughly a year after Soneium’s mainnet launch in January 2025, when Sony’s blockchain unit described the network as a public blockchain initiative built through Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint venture with Startale.
What Sony is backing inside the Soneium stack
Soneium is an Ethereum layer-2 built using Optimism’s OP Stack / Superchain tooling — the same modular approach used by other large consumer brands and crypto-native companies building app-focused L2s.
Startale positioned Soneium as an “entertainment-native” chain and said that since launching mainnet it has grown to over 500 million processed transactions, 5.4 million active wallets, and more than 250 live dApps. The company also highlighted the Startale App as its primary gateway for wallet and app access, and Startale USD (USDSC) as a unified settlement layer connecting users, apps and payments across the ecosystem.
In December, Startale introduced USDSC to serve as a default currency across its app experience. The USDSC token was developed with M0 to support payments and rewards within Sony’s Web3 ecosystem.
Why it matters
For Sony, the investment is a signal that it is moving beyond experimentation and into distribution and monetization plumbing: if Soneium can package wallets, identity, digital collectibles and stablecoin-based settlement into consumer-friendly flows, it could reduce friction for mainstream entertainment use cases (fan engagement, IP licensing, creator monetization and in-app payments) compared with earlier NFT-era rollouts that leaned heavily on third-party infrastructure.
It also places Sony’s blockchain bet inside a broader industry trend: major platforms are increasingly choosing Ethereum L2 “app rails” rather than launching standalone chains, aiming for lower fees and interoperability while retaining product control at the application layer.
Startale has raised US$20 million in funding across three rounds. In June 2023, it raised US$3.5 million in seed funding from Sony Network Communications. In Feb 2024, it raised another US$3.5 million in a seed extension round led by UOB Venture Management and Samsung NEXT.
Startale CEO Sota Watanabe framed the latest funding as an expansion of the companies’ shared roadmap: “Startale has been an important partner to Sony since the early days of Soneium,” Watanabe said. “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.”
Kazuhito Hadano, CEO of Sony Ventures Corporation, added: “Startale is a company working across the blockchain space, from infrastructure to applications. With a global perspective, the team is focused on enabling new value flows built on on-chain technologies. Through our ongoing collaboration around Soneium, we look forward to continuing to support Startale’s challenges and ambitions going forward”.
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Image Credits: Sony, Startale Group, Canva
