2024 Crypto VC AI Investment Landscape: Which Projects Have Top VCs Like a16z, Binance, and Coinbase Invested In?
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2024 Crypto VC AI Investment Landscape: Which Projects Have Top VCs Like a16z, Binance, and Coinbase Invested In?
"Crypto+AI" Emerges as the New Darling of Crypto Venture Capital: A Comprehensive Overview of Moves by Giants Like a16z, Polychain, Delphi, and Coinbase
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Xiyu, ChainCatcher
Editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
In the past two months, Agentfi's explosive growth has once again highlighted the immense potential of the convergence between AI and crypto (also known as crypto AI). In their 2025 cryptocurrency industry trend forecasts recently released, prominent figures and institutions such as a16z partners, Messari, and Blockworks co-founders all pointed to the integration of AI and crypto as a dominant theme for the 2025 crypto market. The intersection of cryptographic technologies and AI is expected to achieve breakthrough progress, driving the rise of numerous AI projects and associated tokens.
Looking back at 2024, the crypto AI market witnessed an unprecedented investment boom, with major investment firms rushing in and funding amounts surging rapidly. Leading venture capital firms within the crypto space—such as Grayscale, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, and a16z—have actively entered strategic positions in "Crypto+AI" initiatives.
Notably, institutions including Delphi Ventures, CoinFund, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, and a16z have not only voiced strong support but also demonstrated firm confidence through multiple investments in the crypto AI sector.
In its “2025 Crypto Outlook Report” published on December 24, Messari revealed that crypto AI was the most eye-catching emerging investment theme of 2024. Funding in this domain saw approximately 100% year-on-year growth, while the number of funding rounds surged by 138%. This article systematically reviews how top-tier crypto VCs positioned themselves across the Crypto+AI landscape in 2024 and examines the fundamentals of the specific projects they invested in.
Grayscale, Delphi, Coinbase, Binance Labs, and Other Crypto Investment Firms Have All Entered the 'Crypto+AI' Space
Capital serves as a core driver of industry advancement and early-stage project identification, with fund flows and public investment activities historically serving as key indicators of market trends. In 2024, the crypto AI market experienced a significant investment surge, drawing intense interest from institutional investors and leading to soaring investment volumes.
Prominent crypto-focused venture capital firms—including Grayscale, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Binance Labs, and a16z—have publicly announced active involvement in investing in and strategically positioning themselves within Crypto+AI ventures.
At the beginning of this year (January), Tommy, co-founder of Delphi Digital, openly expressed high optimism about the fusion of crypto and AI on social media platform X, encouraging relevant project developers to reach out. He disclosed that Delphi Ventures had already invested in several crypto AI projects, including decentralized GPU network io.net, AI blockchain OG Labs, and AI-focused venture fund Mythos Ventures. In October, its research arm Delphi Lab partnered with the NEAR Foundation to launch an AI accelerator aimed at advancing projects at the intersection of AI and Web3.
a16z crypto, the dedicated crypto-focused venture fund under a16z, often acts as a bellwether for industry direction. Its representatives have repeatedly stated public support for integrating crypto and AI projects. As early as March, reports indicated that a16z was raising a new fund totaling up to $6 billion, with around 15% of it earmarked specifically for AI infrastructure and applications. Among the 21 projects selected for the a16z Crypto Fall 2024 Startup Accelerator (a16z CSX) cohort announced in September, five were related to crypto AI: Skyfire, decentralized AI network OpenGradient, GPU project Kuzco, enterprise-focused blockchain AI solution Banyan, and PIN AI. Additionally, several AI agent projects that gained popularity in October, including GOAT (truth_terminal), received direct crypto donations from a16z crypto partners.
In the second half of the year, more crypto venture capital firms declared their entry into the crypto AI arena—some establishing dedicated AI funds, others increasing capital allocation toward crypto AI projects.
On June 19, Pantera Capital announced it was raising a $1 billion new fund, allocating over $200 million to AI-related investments. Fund manager Cosmo Jiang stated that over the next 10 to 20 years, all crypto companies would become AI companies. Pantera Capital has already allocated 15% to 20% of capital in its earlier funds toward blockchain projects involving AI.
In August, Grayscale launched the “Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund,” a new trust fund focused on decentralized AI, primarily investing in tokens tied to AI projects. Initial holdings included Bittensor (TAO), Filecoin (FIL), Livepeer (LPT), Near (NEAR), and Render (RNDR), with quarterly rebalancing based on portfolio performance. As of December 23, the fund’s holdings expanded to include Bittensor (TAO), Filecoin (FIL), Near (NEAR), Render (RNDR), and The Graph (GRT), managing total assets worth approximately $1.5 million.
Also in August, Max Coniglio, Investment Director at Binance Labs, shared his team's recent strategy during a public event: promoting the development of AI-driven decentralized applications (DApps). Binance Labs has made consecutive investments in Sahara AI, a decentralized AI network, and MyShell, an AI bot platform. Coniglio believes that combining AI and blockchain represents a powerful force, and if both technologies advance together along open-source protocol paths, they could usher in a thriving new era. In a recent interview, Yi He, co-founder of Binance, commented on the synergistic evolution of AI and crypto: AI technology is triggering a productivity revolution whose impact far exceeds imagination. While blockchain mainly transforms labor relations and profit distribution models, AI directly enhances user productivity as a revolutionary technology.
In October, Coinbase Ventures officially stated that its investment strategy has evolved from pure cryptocurrency investments to deep engagement with "Crypto+AI" projects. Hoolie Tejwani, head of Coinbase Ventures, emphasized the natural complementarity between crypto and AI—two technologies tightly intertwined like the double helix structure of DNA, jointly laying a solid foundation for future digital life. Indeed, as early as August, Coinbase Ventures had participated in funding AI agent payment projects Skyfire and Payman.
This collective endorsement of crypto AI by leading venture capital firms sends a clear signal: in the coming market cycle, risk investment firms will make large-scale and long-term bets across the crypto AI landscape.
According to Messari’s Q3 2024 Crypto Investment & Funding Report, crypto VCs injected over $213 million into AI projects during the quarter—an increase of 250% compared to the previous quarter and a staggering 340% year-on-year rise.
Furthermore, according to Messari’s freshly released *2025 Crypto Outlook Report* on December 24, there is a clear trend: investor interest in the intersection of crypto and AI continues to grow stronger. Crypto AI has emerged as the brightest new investment theme of 2024. The field achieved roughly 100% year-over-year growth in total funding, with funding rounds increasing sharply by 138%. Notably, well-known Web3 accelerators such as a16z CSX and Beacon featured numerous crypto AI projects in their latest cohorts. These figures suggest that an increasing number of VC firms are entering this nascent space, and the influx of capital will undoubtedly accelerate the rise of the crypto AI sector.
Crypto Investors’ AI Investment Strategies: Preference for Decentralized AI Infrastructure and Application Products
Data compiled via Rootdata shows that a16z, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, Hack VC, Polychain, and other crypto VCs participated in multiple crypto AI project financings throughout 2024. Particularly active were Coinbase Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Binance Labs, and Hack VC, which demonstrated strong conviction through repeated investments.
Coinbase Ventures began intensifying its investment in crypto AI projects starting in August, backing two AI agent payment infrastructure projects—Payman and Skyfire. Meanwhile, Binance Labs and a16z Crypto engaged with early-stage projects through both direct investments and incubator programs.
Binance Labs, the venture investment and incubation arm of Binance, holds considerable influence in the crypto community, where its backed projects are often seen as hidden gems before exchange listings. Based on disclosed crypto AI investments in 2024, Binance Labs adopted a strategy of first selecting projects into its MVB Incubator program before proceeding with further investments. Projects such as NFPrompt (NFP) and MyShell originated from the MVB Incubator and mostly belong to the category of AI application products.
The parent fund a16z has deep roots in AI investments, having previously backed billion-dollar financing rounds for notable AI companies such as OpenAI, AI chatbot Character.AI, and AI pharmaceutical firm Genesis Therapeutics.
However, per Rootdata data, a16z crypto made relatively few direct investments in crypto AI projects in 2024—only disclosing two: Axal, an AI agent development network, and Balance.fun, an AI virtual character creation platform. Notably, Axal was funded through the a16z CSX accelerator. More commonly, a16z engaged via the a16z CSX incubator model. Of the 21 projects selected for the a16z Crypto Fall 2024 Startup Accelerator (CSX) cohort announced in September, five were linked to crypto AI: Skyfire, decentralized AI network OpenGradient, GPU project Kuzco, enterprise-oriented blockchain AI solution Banyan, and PIN AI.
In its recent 2025 outlook, a16z stressed that the convergence of crypto and artificial intelligence will be a focal point over the next year, especially highlighting the potential of crypto-native AI agents. It envisions AI agents capable of owning and managing wallets, autonomously executing on-chain transactions such as node validation—essentially functioning as truly autonomous AI chatbots rather than human-controlled tools—and achieving self-verification capabilities.
ChainCatcher analysis of investor-backed projects reveals that most 2024 investments targeted AI technical infrastructure and application products. Firms like Polychain and Pantera Capital favored AI infrastructure investments—such as decentralized AI networks, GPU tokenization, and AI data platforms—while Hack VC and Binance Labs showed stronger preferences for AI application products.
List of Crypto AI Projects Invested in by Coinbase, a16z, and Other VCs in 2024
Coinbase Ventures’ 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio
1. AI Agent Payment Tool: Payman
Payman is an AI agent payment proxy solution tailored for AI models and developers, founded in May this year, aiming to build payment infrastructure enabling collaboration between AI and humans. By integrating Payman’s payment API, developers can enable their AI agents to automatically handle financial transactions between AI and humans. Whether an AI developer wants to pay for human assistance or individuals wish to earn compensation for collaborating with AI, integrating the Payman API allows AI agents to automate these payment processes.
The core advantage of Payman lies in offering AI developers a complete AI agent payment proxy system that intelligently manages all payment workflows autonomously, greatly simplifying operational complexity. Payman supports not only fiat payments but also cryptocurrencies such as USDC.
On August 8, Payman announced a $3 million pre-seed round led by Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group. Notably, the project had already been admitted into Binance Labs’ MVB Accelerator Program in July.
Coinbase Ventures’ support for Payman extends beyond financial backing—they have consistently promoted the project publicly. At Devcon 2024 in November, Payman collaborated with HYBE, a major South Korean entertainment company, to demonstrate seamless USDC stablecoin payments between AI and humans using virtual idols.
It’s also worth noting that Payman’s co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic previously held key roles in developer relations at Uniswap Foundation and Flow blockchain.
2. AI Agent Payment System: Skyfire – The ‘Visa’ of AI
Skyfire is another AI agent payment solution backed by Coinbase Ventures, created in June by former Ripple executives. It provides AI agents with a fully independent transaction workflow requiring no manual intervention—for purchasing goods or completing any required tasks.
While AI agents are expected to perform autonomous shopping, ticket booking, route planning, and app publishing, most current AI agents cannot independently complete final payment steps—such as paying bills, flight tickets, or website hosting fees. Skyfire addresses this pain point by building a robust cryptocurrency payment system allowing AI agents to conduct financial operations—including receiving and sending payments—without human oversight. For instance, when users allocate funds to an AI agent, it can autonomously use those funds to fulfill user requests, entirely without human input—just as easily as a personal assistant using cash or credit cards to buy coffee. Thus, Skyfire is regarded as the "Visa" of the AI world, empowering AI agents to manage payments, receipts, and savings independently.
In terms of fundraising, Skyfire has performed exceptionally well, attracting strong support from top crypto investors. In August, it successfully closed an $8.5 million seed round backed by Circle, Ripple, and Gemini. In September, Skyfire was accepted into the a16z Fall CSX Accelerator. In October, Coinbase Ventures and a16z Crypto CSX jointly announced a $1 million strategic investment in Skyfire.
As of December 21, Skyfire’s total disclosed funding reached $9.5 million.
3. Decentralized AI Data Network: Vana
Vana is a decentralized data network designed to allow users to tokenize and trade personal data and AI models. Originating from a 2018 MIT research initiative, Vana aims to create a user-owned data pool network, enabling individuals to truly own and control their data, build AI models independently, freely decide how their data is used, and receive economic rewards for contributing data.
Vana establishes a decentralized data marketplace where users employ smart contracts to control their social data. Whenever their data is utilized, users automatically receive rewards. For example, users may offer high-quality data generated on platforms like Google or Reddit to AI developers for model training and earn income in return. This approach effectively tackles the problem of insufficient training data for AI models while opening a novel revenue stream for users leveraging their own data.
On September 18, Vana announced a $5 million strategic round led by Coinbase Ventures. Earlier in April, Vana revealed it had secured an $18 million Series A round led by Paradigm in October 2022—a previously undisclosed deal—and confirmed its cumulative funding had reached $20 million.
By December 21, Vana’s total funding amounted to $25 million.
On December 13, Vana (VANA) launched on Binance Launchpool.
4. Decentralized AI Network: OpenGradient
OpenGradient aims to establish a decentralized AI network that enables developers to create, distribute, and deploy AI models and applications in an open, permissionless manner. Beyond providing AI development toolkits, OpenGradient supports secure and seamless integration of AI workflows into web3 apps and enables decentralized, universal access to AI models.
Currently, OpenGradient is building an EVM-compatible blockchain network, allowing developers to deploy AI models using Solidity smart contracts. Often described as the “HuggingFace of Web3” or the “GitHub for AI developers,” Hugging Face is an open-source model repository where users share machine learning models, widely recognized as the “GitHub of AI.”
In September, OpenGradient was one of 21 startups selected for the a16z Crypto Fall 2024 Startup Accelerator (CSX).
On October 10, OpenGradient announced an $8.5 million seed round co-led by a16z CSX, Foresight Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Symbolic Capital.
5. Decentralized AI Model Factory: Pond
Pond is building a decentralized AI model network that allows any user to easily create their own AI models and monetize them through tokenization—earning it the nickname “decentralized AI model factory.”
In the Web2 world, Kaggle serves as a data modeling and analytics competition platform where developers compete to build the best AI models, though creators do not retain full ownership. Pond seeks to solve this issue by providing developers with essential infrastructure—including data—for creating AI models while ensuring creators maintain ownership, control, and the ability to tokenize their models—making it a “Web3-enhanced version of Kaggle.”
Unlike most LLM-based projects, Pond leverages a large-scale GNN (Graph Neural Network) to perform real-time statistical analysis and predictions on on-chain data. While LLMs excel at information processing and generation, GNN-based Pond specializes in uncovering relationships among data points and extracting valuable insights. It utilizes native on-chain data from the crypto ecosystem and applies graph neural networks to learn from and predict on-chain behaviors—enabling novel business logic such as token price forecasting, AI-enhanced MEV strategies, and DeFi trading algorithms.
On November 7, Pond announced a $7.5 million seed round backed by Archetype, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and others.
a16z Crypto and a16z CSX Accelerator’s 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. AI Agent Development Network: Axal
Axal aims to build a verifiable AI agent development network for any task, offering users a comprehensive toolkit to create AI agent systems simply by stating their intent.
In October, Axal announced a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by CMT Digital, with participation from a16z Crypto Startup School, Escape Velocity, IDG Vietnam, and Artichoke Capital.
Simultaneously, Axal launched its flagship product, Axal Autopilot—an AI agent-powered automated trading platform providing personalized trading strategies, including price tracking, on-chain execution, and yield management.
2. AI Virtual Companion Platform: Balance.fun (EPAL)
Balance originated as a Web3 experience infrastructure launched in February by the E-PAL gaming companion platform, aiming to provide a smooth transition for Web2 users into Web3. The Balance platform integrates an AI-driven system as a core component, allowing users to create personalized AI virtual companions capable of participating in gaming, learning, entertainment, and even productivity tasks tailored to individual preferences, behaviors, and needs.
In September, E-PAL disclosed it had completed two funding rounds led by a16z and Galaxy Interactive, raising a total of $30 million. In November, Balance.fun announced it had raised over $10 million in institutional sales through early node sales, with participants including Animoca Brands, Amber Group, and GSR Markets.
Currently, Balance.fun is conducting node sales priced at $599 per node. According to its roadmap, the ETP token is expected to launch in January 2025.
3. Decentralized Personal AI Network Infrastructure: PIN.AI
PIN AI aims to create an open AI network with unrestricted access to vast contextual data, enabling AI builders to develop various practical personal AI applications. Known limitations in AI model inference stem from restricted input data; however, much of this data resides in private devices such as smartphones and computers due to privacy concerns. PIN AI aims to unlock this personal data and empower users to create private AI applications tailored to their needs, enabling AI developers to deliver everyday, useful services such as shopping assistance, travel planning, and financial organization.
The primary goal of the PIN protocol is to foster an open ecosystem for personal AI applications through three foundational layers: personal data (emphasizing privacy and data ownership), personal AI (trusted AI companions operating on private devices), and external AI (an open market for AI services).
This architecture allows AI applications to access user context data and match user intentions with specialized external AI—all while preserving user privacy.
On September 10, PIN AI announced a $10 million pre-seed round, with participation from a16z CSX, Hack VC, and Blockchain Builders Fund (Stanford Blockchain Accelerator).
Binance Labs’ 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. AI Content Creation Platform: NFPrompt (NFP)
NFPrompt (NFP) is an AI-powered NFT content generation platform that offers creators AI tools for generating images, videos, profile pictures (PFPs), music, and more. Users can effortlessly craft stunning works using prompts and instantly mint them as NFTs to confirm ownership. The project was admitted into Binance Labs’ sixth-season incubation program in September 2023, listed its NFP token on Binance in December last year, and announced Binance Labs investment in March this year.
2. Decentralized AI Data Network: Privasea
Previously known as Nulink, Privasea initially focused on privacy-preserving data computation and was admitted into Binance Labs’ fourth-season incubation program in May 2022. It now provides solutions for data privacy and security during AI model computations. Additionally, it launched ImHuman, an identity verification program similar to WorldCoin, which securely converts human biometric data into training datasets for AI models while preserving data privacy.
In March, Privasea announced completion of a $5 million seed round, with Binance Labs among the investors.
3. AI Knowledge Sharing and Search Platform: QnA3.AI (GPT)
QnA3.AI (GPT),简称 QnA3, is an AI-driven Web3 knowledge-sharing and search platform designed to deliver accurate information in the cryptocurrency domain. It offers not just information access but also complex logical analysis functions to assist users in making trading decisions. It was also part of Binance Labs’ sixth-season incubation program in September 2023. The QnA3.AI token (GPT) launched on OKX in February and announced Binance Labs investment in March.
4. AI Bot Platform: MyShell
MyShell is building an AI consumer application layer connecting users, creators, and open-source AI researchers. By offering a full suite of AI agent creation tools, it enables users to easily discover or build AI agent-based applications or bots—such as voice chatbots, language learning assistants, and image generators. It was selected for Binance Labs’ sixth-season incubation program in 2023 and completed a $5.6 million seed round at a $57 million valuation in December of the same year.
In March, MyShell announced a $11 million Pre-A round led by Dragonfly, Delphi Digital, and Bankless Ventures. In August, it announced further investment from Binance Labs.
5. Decentralized AI Network: Sahara AI
Sahara AI is a decentralized AI network infrastructure supporting the assetization of AI, helping users deploy or build customized, personalized AI products, and ensuring fair attribution and rewards for all contributors across the AI value chain.
In August, Sahara AI announced a $43 million funding round led by Binance Labs, Pantera Capital, and Polychain Capital.
In its 2025 roadmap released on December 24, Sahara AI stated it has launched a data service platform and testnet, allowing users to earn rewards through data collection and labeling. The Sahara Chain mainnet is scheduled for release in Q3 2025.
Pantera Capital’s 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. Decentralized AGI System: Sentient
Sentient aims to develop a decentralized Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) platform powered by community contributions, competing with traditional closed-source AI development models like OpenAI. It enables AI model creators to tokenize their models and uses Web3 mechanisms to incentivize users to contribute to and expand AI models, collectively building open-source AI models driven by community efforts.
In July, Sentient announced an $85 million seed round backed by Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Delphi Ventures, and Hack VC.
Delphi Digital’s 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. Decentralized AI Operating System: 0G Labs
OG Labs (full name Zero Gravity Labs) initially gained attention with its narrative around modular AI blockchains, claiming scalable data availability (DA) layers to support AI DApps. In March, 0G announced a $35 million pre-seed round with participation from Hack VC, Animoca Brands, and Delphi Digital.
However, in November, OG Labs announced securing $290 million in new funding, comprising a $40 million seed round and a $250 million token purchase commitment. Co-founder Michael Heinrich noted that once the 0G token launches on cryptocurrency exchanges, the project will be able to draw funds from these token commitments.
Meanwhile, OG Labs has shifted focus from modular AI blockchains to building what it calls a decentralized AI operating system (dAIOS), aimed at enabling on-chain AI application development—with modular AI being just one component.
According to co-founder statements, the 0G protocol mainnet is expected to launch in Q1 or Q2 next year.
2. AI Data Collection Platform: Grass (GRASS)
Grass, developed by Wynd Network (a decentralized internet proxy network), is a decentralized network resource sharing and redistribution (DePIN) platform allowing individuals to sell idle internet bandwidth and network data.
Users can download the Grass Chrome browser extension to automatically share unused bandwidth and personal data and earn rewards—similar to earning tokens by idling data traffic. Grass converts collected personal data into AI datasets for developer use in AI training, positioning itself as a data supply layer for decentralized AI.
In September, Grass announced a Series A round at a near-billion-dollar valuation, with investors including Hack VC, Polychain Capital, and Delphi Digital—though the exact amount remains undisclosed. On October 16, the Grass token GRASS officially launched.
On November 25, Andrew Kang, partner at Mechanism Capital, stated that AI development has made data one of the world’s most valuable commodities. Grass creates a data pipeline via crypto incentives that most AI companies cannot access. Given its current growth trajectory, it could generate nine-figure revenues next year—or even surpass billions.
3. Decentralized AI Network: Allora
Allora was formerly Upshot, an NFT pricing protocol, which rebranded to Allora in February and pivoted from an NFT evaluation platform to a decentralized AI network.
On the Allora platform, prediction tasks are used to evaluate the performance of AI models under current conditions via multiple AI agents, rewarding agents based on the quality of their predictions and assessments. This incentive mechanism enables continuous learning and improvement of models on Allora, adapting dynamically as markets evolve.
In June, Allora announced a $3 million strategic round for its decentralized AI network Allora Labs, with investors including Archetype, Delphi Ventures, and CMS Holdings. To date, Allora’s total funding stands at $35 million.
4. Decentralized GPU Project: io.net (IO)
io.net is a decentralized AI compute DePIN protocol aiming to address shortages in computing resources for AI and machine learning by leveraging distributed GPU and CPU resources. It builds a two-sided market centered on chips: suppliers are global owners of GPU and CPU computing power, while demand comes from AI engineers needing to train or run inference tasks. Its mission is to integrate millions of GPUs into its DePIN network.
In March, io.net announced a $30 million Series A round backed by Hack VC, Multicoin Capital, Delphi Digital, and Solana Labs, bringing total funding to $40 million at a $1 billion valuation.
In June, the io.net token IO launched on Binance Launchpool; in October, IO was listed on Coinbase.
Hack VC’s 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. GPU Tokenization Platform: Exabits
Exabits aims to unlock over $1 trillion in AI computing markets by tokenizing physical GPUs into liquid financial assets. By dividing GPU compute resources and converting them into tokens, investors can purchase EGPU tokens representing GPU capacity to earn returns.
Currently, Exabits has established a pathway to GPU-Fi (G-Fi), enabling GPU assets to flow across various financial platforms, improving capital efficiency across the AI ecosystem while democratizing AI computing so anyone can participate in the AI compute economy. Official data indicates Exabits has provided enterprise-grade GPU resources to companies such as EMC, Viggle, Lepton, IO.NET, Aethir, Akash, MyShell, Nebula Block, and Game Killer.
In February, Exabits announced a seed round with undisclosed funding. On December 11, Exabits announced a $15 million seed round at a $150 million valuation, led by Hack VC—bringing its total funding to $20 million.
2. GPU Asset Tokenization Platform: GAIB
Like Exabits, GAIB aims to unlock the trillion-dollar AI compute market by tokenizing GPU assets, transforming traditional GPU financing models. On December 13, GAIB announced a $5 million seed round with participation from Hack VC, Faction, and Aethir.
Official sources reveal that GAIB has completed prototype development and will launch a pilot project this month, with plans to roll out its Alpha product and platform token within the next two months.
3. AI Agent Infrastructure: Theoriq
Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent infrastructure network launched by Web3 machine learning platform ChainML. Through AI agent development tools, it enables any user to create their own AI agents without coding.
In May, ChainML, Theoriq’s developer, announced a $6.2 million extension of its seed round led by Hack VC.
Currently, Theoriq is in testnet phase, with the mainnet scheduled to go live by the end of 2024.
4. AI Image Generation Bot: imgnAI
imgnAI is a consumer-facing AI image generation bot allowing users to generate images automatically via simple text commands—functionally similar to text-to-image models like Midjourney. However, users must purchase the native IMGNAI token on the imgnAI platform to unlock advanced creation tools and features.
In January, imgnAI announced a $1.6 million seed round led by Hack VC. It also developed a Twitter AI agent avatar @Naifu (Naifu).
Polychain’s 2024 Crypto AI Investment Portfolio:
1. Decentralized AI Cloud Platform: Hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is building an open AI cloud platform aiming to integrate global GPU computing resources via blockchain technology to overcome industry bottlenecks in AI model compute cost and allocation. To this end, Hyperbolic has built a dedicated AI inference service platform and a GPU marketplace. The former allows developers to invoke open-source AI models via simple APIs and supports model training and fine-tuning; the latter enables GPU compute power to be traded like commodities, allowing users to rent or buy/sell GPUs.
On December 11, Hyperbolic announced a $12 million Series A round co-led by Variant and Polychain Capital. Earlier in July, Hyperbolic announced a $7 million seed round, also led by Polychain Capital. Total funding now reaches $20 million.
2. L1 Network Designed for AI Agents: Talus Network
Talus Network is an L1 infrastructure specifically designed for AI agents, enabling any user to create their own dedicated AI agent. Notably, this L1 network is built on the Move programming language. The mainnet has not yet launched, but users can apply to join the testnet.
On November 26, Talus Network announced a $6 million funding round at a $150 million valuation, led by Polychain Capital with participation from Foresight Ventures and Animoca. An earlier $3 million round in February was also led by Polychain Capital. As of December 24, Talus Network’s total disclosed funding reached $9 million.
3. Decentralized AI Data Network: OpenLedger
OpenLedger is a data blockchain for AI, providing infrastructure for creating domain-specific language models. It supports developers in building various AI agents, chatbots, autonomous driving systems, and more by collecting and managing specialized data via its data network and attributing rewards to data contributors and creators using blockchain technology.
On July 2, OpenLedger announced an $8 million seed round led by Polychain Capital.
4. Decentralized AI Network: Ritual
Ritual is a decentralized AI network infrastructure aiming to create an open, permissionless system for creating, training, improving, and trading AI models. Its SDK allows developers to seamlessly integrate AI models into applications or protocols on any blockchain. Additionally, users can fine-tune, tokenize, trade, and perform inference training on AI models using cryptographic methods within the network.
On April 8, Ritual announced a multi-million dollar A1 round from Polychain Capital—the exact amount undisclosed. It previously raised $25 million in November 2023, led by Archetype.
The Ritual Chain testnet launched on November 19, offering developers a platform to build AI-native applications.
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