Sony Innovation Fund, the corporate venture capital arm of Sony Group, has invested an additional $13 million in Startale Group, the web3 infrastructure firm and Sony joint-venture partner, according to a Wednesday statement. Led by CEO Sota Watanabe, who founded Astar Network, Startale developed and delivered Soneium, an Ethereum layer 2 blockchain, in collaboration with Sony Block Solutions Labs. The Singapore-based blockchain infrastructure company secured $3.5 million from Sony in a seed round in September 2023 and raised a $3.5 million extension from Dahua Venture Capital and Samsung Next in 2024. Since its mainnet launch last January, Soneium has processed over 500 million transactions and attracted 5.4 million active wallets, as of the latest data . “Startale has been an important partner to Sony since the early days of Soneium,” said Watanabe.