Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Fu Ruhe (@vincent 31515173)
In the past two months, the AI Agent sector has experienced rapid development, with projects represented by a16z bringing significant financial returns to the market. At the same time, many well-known institutions have unanimously predicted that the prospect of the integration of AI and crypto will be promising in 2025, with institutions such as DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari all identifying AI+Crypto as an important future development direction.
Unlike traditional financing models, the outbreak of the AI Agent sector initially took place on-chain in the form of memes, a feature that has led to much higher participation from retail investors than VCs. This fair launch approach has higher fairness and transparency compared to previous projects' private fundraising, attracting the attention of a large number of investors. However, although the lack of VC involvement seems to make the market more equal and open, can we conclude that the absence of VCs is necessarily a good thing?
In fact, although in recent years, due to factors such as token unlocking, VC-invested projects have faced token price pressure, and VC attention has declined, this is due to the nature of capital's pursuit of profits and exit mechanisms. But the role of VCs should not be overlooked, especially in the due diligence stage of projects in the early stages. VCs' in-depth due diligence can help a wide range of investors filter out potentially high-risk projects and avoid too much blind investment. In addition, projects with strong financial resources are often able to focus more on technological innovation in the early development stage, and they often have more professional and efficient capabilities in project promotion and later operations, which are advantages that most on-chain meme projects cannot match.
Therefore, in summary, the investment opportunities in the AI Agent sector are not limited to on-chain meme projects, and the support of VC capital also has its unique advantages. By reviewing the AI Agent concept projects invested in the primary market over the past half year, Odaily Planet Daily hopes to provide readers with diversified investment choices. Whether it is a VC project or an on-chain meme project, as long as the trend is grasped correctly, there are opportunities for profit.
Coinbase Ventures and Visa Co-Invest - Payman
Payman is an AI-to-user payment platform that aims to provide payment capabilities for AI so that it can pay users to complete tasks (such as marketing, etc.). The platform supports fiat currency and USDC stablecoin payments, providing a convenient channel for fund flow between AI and users.
Core functions:
Easy integration: Payman's API allows users to provide funds to AI and start executing tasks in seconds.
Powerful dashboard: The platform has built-in spending limit functions to help manage AI budgets, and precise task tracking to monitor AI spending.
Flexible task publishing: AI can easily assign tasks to user-needed users or publish tasks to the platform's marketplace.
Platform highlights:
Human marketplace: Payman provides a dedicated marketplace for AI to find users to complete tasks it cannot independently complete or needs assistance in certain areas.
Multiple payment methods: Whether AI chooses to pay users in fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or through a bank account, Payman can provide support to ensure a convenient and secure payment process.
Payman allows AI to pay users to complete tasks, with the specific steps as follows:
Add funds to the AI wallet: First, log in to the platform, create an AI agent, and recharge its wallet.
Integrate the Payman API into the AI: By integrating Payman's API, provide funds to the AI and start using the platform.
AI publishes tasks: The AI agent will publish tasks to the marketplace, inviting users to participate and complete the tasks.
Webhooks notify task completion: Payman's Webhooks will notify the AI agent when the task is completed, helping it optimize task processing and execution.
Payman has a rich application scenario. For example, in product management, AI agents can pay users for feedback to optimize product development; in the interview process, AI can pay candidates to complete tasks and analyze the results to improve recruitment efficiency; in marketing and growth, AI can not only formulate marketing strategies, but also pay influencers to execute tasks to expand brand influence; in the engineering field, AI can pay experts to review code to ensure its accuracy and efficiency. Through these applications, Payman has injected new momentum into various industries, promoting in-depth collaboration between AI and users.
Payman announced the completion of a $3 million pre-seed round of financing on August 8 last year, with investors including Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group, well-known venture capital firms. The project was successfully selected for the Binance Labs MVB accelerator program in July last year. Payman's co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic previously held key developer relations positions at the Uniswap Foundation and the Flow blockchain.
Coinbase Ventures and a16z Co-Invest - Skyfire
Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed for the AI economy, dedicated to providing a global, instant, and open payment system for AI agents, supporting fully autonomous transactions between AI agents, language models (LLMs), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be paid in the USDC stablecoin to ensure transaction stability and liquidity.
Skyfire's payment network can connect AI agents and service providers globally, enabling AI agents to autonomously and efficiently pay for services ranging from data analysis to content creation, to complex decision-making and problem-solving. Unlike traditional payment systems, Skyfire eliminates human intermediaries, allowing AI agents to make payments without human intervention, significantly improving efficiency and automation.
Skyfire completed an $8.5 million seed round of financing last August, with participation from well-known institutions such as Circle, Ripple, and Gemini, and later received a $1 million strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures and a16z CSX, bringing the total funding to $9.5 million. a16z Crypto announced that its crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City in the fall of 2024, and Skyfire was successfully selected as one of the 21 startups in this batch.
Skyfire's payment network is based on the USDC stablecoin and has the public support of Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire. Skyfire is currently deployed on the Polygon network and plans to expand to other blockchains in the future.
Skyfire was founded by a former Ripple executive, and co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi said that traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI agents, while cryptocurrencies and blockchain provide an ideal solution - providing 24/7 micro-transactions and efficient, low-cost transaction services. Skyfire's team has already collaborated with multiple clients, including a parts manufacturer for an Indian automotive service center and an AI infrastructure provider, and is in negotiations with several large language models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solution.
CMT Digital Led Investment - Axal
Axal is focused on building a verifiable autonomous agent network, aiming to enable intelligent agents to perform various tasks. From complex trading strategies to community interactions, users only need to define their requirements through simple natural language or programming interfaces, and Axal will be responsible for sourcing agents, auction bidding, and payment processing.
Axal has completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of financing, led by CMT Digital, with other supporters including a16z Crypto Startup School, Escape Velocity, IDG Vietnam, Artichoke Capital, Trident Digital, Blockchain Builders Fund, Blockhunters Group, Echo, and Mentat Group, as well as numerous angel investors.
Axal has also launched its first product - Axal Autopilot, a trading automation platform driven by intelligent agents, aimed at helping cryptocurrency holders create personalized trading strategies. The platform provides features such as price tracking, on-chain transaction execution, and yield management, allowing users to more efficiently manage their crypto assets.
Hack VC Led Investment - Theoriq
Theoriq is a modular and composable AI agent infrastructure, providing powerful support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computing, dedicated to applying machine learning to areas such as DeFi, gaming, social, and data infrastructure.
Theoriq was founded in 2022. One of Theoriq's core services is to build a market for AI agents and resources, and through its forum called Infinity Hub, allow autonomous AI agents to interact and collaborate with each other, thereby enhancing their capabilities and productivity in executing certain tasks. The platform encourages agents to cooperate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialized trade in the globalized economy, to achieve more efficient task completion.
Theoriq platform has created a reward system for AI agents, including two important concepts:
Proof of Contribution: Agents are rewarded for their useful work.
Proof of Collaboration: Agents are rewarded for collaborating with other agents on tasks.
These agents can access data, computation, digital assets, and physical assets, and can make on-chain payments and receipts. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool, allowing users to build their own professional agents without a technical background. The applications of these agents are wide-ranging, and the latest released version, Claude, has enhanced computational performance, significantly improving the functionality of AI agents.
At the same time, the platform has set up a governance mechanism for malicious agents, using a ranking system to evaluate agents, and users can judge the value of agents based on their performance. Users can also provide funding by staking agents and provide feedback to help further optimize the agents.
Theoriq has received over $10 million in funding support from companies such as Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, and HTX Ventures. Recently, the platform has also launched an incentivized testnet, and the mainnet is expected to be launched soon.
Polychain Capital Leads Investment in Talus Network
Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed specifically for decentralized AI agents, aiming to provide autonomous execution and management capabilities for AI agents in multiple domains (such as DeFi, gaming, DAO, etc.). Talus Network adopts the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as the blockchain infrastructure, and its technology stack includes the Nexus agent framework, Python SDK, and off-chain services, all of which are intended to provide developers with flexibility, performance, and security to support the development of decentralized AI solutions.
Talus Network is an infrastructure for users to create and deploy AI agents. These intelligent agents can not only optimize liquidity strategies in DeFi, but also act as automated resource collection agents in games, helping players or guilds improve efficiency.
Talus Network announced the completion of a $6 million funding round on November 26 last year, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Animoca, and others. The platform's valuation reached $150 million after the funding. This round of funding will be used to further develop the Talus ecosystem, including Protochain, the Nexus framework, and the development of the "AI dating experience" application.
Previously, Talus had completed a $3 million seed round in February 2023, also led by Polychain Capital.
Talus agents have the ability to autonomously manage smart contracts and can perform tasks in multiple domains, such as portfolio optimization and MEV protection in DeFi, financial management and grant allocation in DAOs, and automated NPC management and testing in games. Talus agents will become on-chain assets that can be collectively owned and monetized by users, promoting the commercialization of decentralized AI agents.
In addition, Talus Network has launched an interactive blockchain application called AI Bae, which provides an "AI dating experience". Users can interact with AI companions called "Baes", generate unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts, and the application offers real-time chat, Polymarket-style betting features, and meme-token elements, allowing users to bet on dating outcomes and even convert Baes into tokens.
