Blockchain-AI startup attracts investors’ attention

The intersection of artificial intelligence and blockchain seems to be a growing focus for venture capitalists and innovators around the world. Companies developing solutions based on these technologies saw significant capital raises in June, most of which were seed rounds.

One such protocol is Sentient, which has raised $85 million in funding to develop an open source artificial intelligence platform. The round was led by Peter Thiel Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures. The startup is an AI research firm that wants to enable developers to monetize their open source models and data, similar to other ecosystems like the Super Intelligence Alliance.

Another startup, ORA, uses AI models and blockchain to monetize developers. In early June, the protocol raised $20 million from Polychain, HF0 and Hashkey Capital. It is working on a system that allows anyone who buys a token to share ownership of the revenue generated by the AI ​​model.

“I am particularly excited about the opportunities in the convergence of AI and Crypto, although even this distinction may be out of date in a few years,” Pantera Capital Portfolio Manager Cosmo Jiang told Cointelegraph. As a tool, just about every business has embraced the Internet in the last 20 years:

“There is no distinction between “AI businesses” and “non-AI businesses”. […] As such, we expect many blockchain-enabled businesses to clearly address AI or related problems.

Pantera is an investor in Bitensor, a decentralized platform for building and deploying AI models. It acts as a marketplace where users can create, train and share AI models, earning rewards for contributing to the network. The money was made in early 2024, and the amount invested was not disclosed. “It's a meaningful position in our portfolio,” Jiang said of the token deal. A venture firm in the blockchain space has allocated $200 million to AI projects.

This edition of Cointelegraph's VC Roundup features another group of startups that raised capital in June.

Lombard Raises $16M Seed Round for Bitcoin Recovery

Lombard has partnered with Babylon to close a $16 million seed fund to develop the Bitcoin (BTC) recovery ecosystem. Polychain Capital led the round, with participation from Dao5, Nomad, Foresight Ventures and ABCDE. Major exchanges including OKX and Bitget also contributed. The startup's main product is LBTC — a liquid and yielding representation of BTC that can cross decentralized finance protocols as collateral, Lombard said. The product is expected to unlock BTC payments based on the Babylon protocol. Behind the startup are former executives from Argentina, Coinbase and Maple Finance.

Transformed has received $10M in funding from the ‘Entertainment Datasphere' led by the Spartan team.

Redacted has raised $10 million in funding led by Spartan Group with participation from Saison Capital, Animoka Brands and Polygon Ventures. The startup introduces the Web3 entertainment ecosystem, which combines blockchain and artificial intelligence to create an “entertainment datasphere” that allows users to play, trade and watch content while earning rewards — a process known as farming. The revamped leadership team is said to include backgrounds from companies such as Tesla, Bank of America, Kraken and LEGO. The team has allocated more than 50% of its tokens to the community and ecosystem. A team of consultants and advisors from companies such as Saison Capital, Confection Labs, King/Candy Crush, Amazon and Microsoft are helping design and build the ecosystem.

RedStone closes $15M Series A round led by Arrington Capital

Modular Oracle developer Redstone has closed a $15 million Series A round led by Arrington Capital, with participation from SevenX, IOSG Ventures, Spartan Capital, White Star Capital, Kraken Ventures, Amber Group, Protagonist, Gumi Cryptos, Apeiron (Samara Group), among others. According to the protocol, the total value of RedStone (TVS) has reached more than 4 billion dollars. The startup says it has more than 110 customers across 60 chains, including Pendle, Morpho and Venus. In January, Redstone became the only cryptocurrency to integrate with Ton (the open network) and in April received a $500 million commitment from EtherFi. It provides data feeds for Ethereum, zkSync Era, Avalanche, Base, Polygon, Linea, Celo, Optimism, Arbitrum, Fantom, BNB Chain, Blast and Bitcoin Layer-2s, such as Merlin Chain and BOB.

Covalent closes $5M round to provide long-term data supply across Asia

Blockchain infrastructure firm Covalent has announced the closing of a $5 million strategic funding round led by Rocktree Capital along with CMCCC Global, Moonrock Capital and Double Peak Group. The funding will be used to expand Covalent's operations in Asia and support long-term data acquisition in China, Korea, Singapore and other regions. The startup has been working with the Ethereum Wayback Machine (EWM) on its modular data infrastructure layer since 2019, and claims to have integrated 225 blockchains and 240 million wallets. Covalent is a structured data pool for decentralized artificial intelligence training. Former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes serves as Covalent's strategic advisor.

DePIN Base Camp announces six starters for the Web3 accelerator program

Outlier Ventures has announced the six startups selected for the DePIN Base Camp accelerator program. Remote 12-week is a collaboration between Outlier, peak and Borderless Capital. The selected startups are Aido (United Arab Emirates), Caesar Network (Vietnam), Rome Network (Finland), ROVR (Hong Kong), KeyBrick (US) and YOM (UK). These startups are building products on Internet of Things hardware networks, decentralized computing and AI, wireless network optimization, digital twin technology, cyber security, and cloud gaming and metaverse. Throughout the program, the teams will receive support from Outlier on product roadmapping, community building, entity setup and fundraising. Meanwhile, Peaq shares its expertise in building and running DePIN. In addition, each group will receive an investment from Borderless Capital.

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