Which AI Agent projects have VCs invested in?

Original Article Title: "Which AI Agent Projects Have Received VC Support?"

Original Article Author: Fu Ruhao, Odaily Planet Daily

Over the past two months, the AI Agent sector has experienced rapid development, with projects represented by ai16z bringing considerable wealth returns to the market. At the same time, several well-known institutions have expressed optimism about the future integration of AI and crypto when predicting trends for 2025. Institutions such as DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari have all identified AI+Crypto as a key direction for future development.

Unlike projects under traditional financing models, the explosion of the AI Agent sector initially took place on-chain in the form of memes. This characteristic has led to a significantly higher level of retail investor participation compared to VCs. This fair launch approach, as opposed to the previous projects' private fundraising, offers greater fairness and transparency, attracting the attention of many investors. However, despite the seemingly more equal and open market without VC involvement, can we assert that the absence of VCs is always a good thing?

In fact, in recent years, VC-invested projects have faced token price pressure due to factors such as token unlocks, leading to a decrease in VC attention, driven by the profit-seeking nature of capital and exit mechanisms. However, the role of VCs should not be underestimated, especially in the early stages of a project during due diligence. The in-depth due diligence by VCs can help investors filter out potential high-risk projects and avoid excessive blind investments. Furthermore, well-funded project teams are often able to focus more on technical innovation in the early stages and possess more professional and efficient capabilities in project promotion and later-stage operation, advantages that most on-chain meme projects cannot match.

Therefore, in summary, investment opportunities in the AI Agent sector are not limited to on-chain meme projects alone; the backing of VC funding also has its unique advantages. By taking stock of AI Agent concept projects that received first-hand market investment in the past six months, Odaily Planet Daily hopes to provide readers with diversified investment options. Whether it's a VC project or an on-chain meme project, as long as you can accurately grasp the trend, there are profit opportunities.

Coinbase Ventures and Visa Co-Invest — Payman

Payman is an artificial intelligence-to-user payment platform designed to provide AI with payment capabilities so that it can pay users for tasks such as marketing. The platform supports fiat currency and USDC stablecoin payments, offering a convenient fund flow channel for interactions between AI and users.

Core Features:

· Seamless Integration: Payman's API allows users to provide funds to AI in seconds and start task execution.

· Powerful Dashboard: The platform features built-in expenditure control to help manage AI budgets and monitor AI spending through precise task tracking.

· Flexible Task Assignment: AI can easily assign tasks to human users needing to complete the tasks or publish tasks to the platform's marketplace.

Platform Highlights:

· Human Marketplace: Payman provides an exclusive marketplace for artificial intelligence to find users to complete tasks it cannot independently perform or needs assistance with in certain areas.

· Multiple Payment Methods: Whether artificial intelligence chooses to use fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or pay users through bank accounts, Payman provides support to ensure a convenient and secure payment process.

Payman enables artificial intelligence to pay users for task completion, with the following specific steps:

· Add Funds to AI Wallet: First, log in to the platform, create an AI agent, and top up its wallet.

· Integrate Payman API into AI: By integrating Payman's API, provide funds to AI and start using the platform.

· AI Task Publication: The AI agent publishes tasks to the marketplace, inviting users to participate and complete tasks.

· Webhooks Notify Task Completion: Payman's provided Webhooks will notify the AI agent upon task completion, aiding in task optimization and execution.

Payman has diverse applications. For example, in product management, an AI agent can optimize product development by paying users for feedback; in the interview process, AI can pay candidates to complete tasks and analyze results to enhance recruitment efficiency; in marketing and growth, AI can not only formulate marketing strategies but also pay influencers to perform tasks, thereby expanding brand influence; in engineering, AI can pay experts to review code, ensuring its accuracy and efficiency. Through these applications, Payman injects new energy into various industries, driving deep collaboration between AI and users.

Payman announced completion of a $3 million pre-seed funding round on August 8 last year, with investors including Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group, among other well-known venture capital firms. The project was selected for Binance Labs' MVB Accelerator Program as early as July last year. Payman's co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic previously held developer relations roles at the Uniswap Foundation and Flow blockchain.

Coinbase Ventures and a16z Co-invest in Skyfire

Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed for the AI economy, aiming to provide a global instant, open payment system for AI agents, supporting fully autonomous transactions across AI agents, Language Learning Models (LLMs), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be conducted using the stablecoin USDC to ensure transaction stability and liquidity.

Skyfire's payment network can connect AI agents and service providers globally, allowing AI agents to autonomously transact efficiently, enjoying digital services from data analytics to content creation, to complex decision-making and problem-solving. Unlike traditional payment systems, Skyfire eliminates human intermediaries, enabling AI agents to transact without human intervention, significantly enhancing efficiency and automation.

In August last year, Skyfire completed an $8.5 million seed funding round with participation from prominent 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 2024 fall crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City, and Skyfire was one of the 21 startups selected for this batch.

Skyfire's payment network operates based on the USDC stablecoin and has received public support from Jeremy Allaire, Co-founder, and CEO of Circle. Skyfire is currently deployed on the Polygon network and plans to expand to other public chains in the future.

Founded by a former Ripple executive, Skyfire's Co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi stated that traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI agents, while cryptocurrencies and blockchain provide an ideal solution—offering round-the-clock microtransactions, efficient, and low-cost transaction services. Skyfire's team has already collaborated with several clients, including a parts manufacturer for an Indian automotive service center and an AI infrastructure provider, and is in talks with multiple large-scale Language Learning Models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solution.

CMT Digital Leads Investment in Axal

Axal focuses on building a verifiable autonomous intelligent agent network designed 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 takes care of agent sourcing, bidding auctions, and payment processing.

Axal has completed a $2.5 million pre-seed funding round 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, Mentat Group, and many institutional and angel investors.

Axal has also launched its first product—Axal Autopilot, which is an intelligent agent-driven trading automation platform designed to help cryptocurrency holders create personalized trading strategies. The platform offers features such as price tracking, on-chain transaction execution, and yield management, allowing users to more efficiently manage their crypto assets.

Hack VC Leads Investment in Theoriq

Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent infrastructure layer that provides robust support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computations, aiming to apply machine learning to DeFi, gaming, social, and data infrastructure, among other areas.

Theoriq was founded in 2022. One of Theoriq's core services is to build a marketplace for AI agents and resources and, through its forum called Infinity Hub, allow autonomous AI agents to interact and collaborate with each other, enhancing their capabilities and productivity when performing certain tasks. The platform encourages agents to collaborate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialization in a global economy, to achieve more efficient task completion.

The Theoriq platform has created a reward system for AI agents, comprising two key concepts:

· Proof of Contribution: Agents receive rewards for the useful work they have done.

· Proof of Collaboration: Agents receive rewards for collaborating with other agents on tasks.

These agents are able to access data, computation, digital assets, and physical assets, and can perform on-chain payments and receipts. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool that allows users to build their own professional agents without a technical background. The applications of these agents are wide-ranging, with the latest release version Claude enhancing computing performance, significantly improving the functionality of AI agents.

Moreover, the platform has established a governance mechanism for malicious agents, evaluating agents through a ranking system, allowing users to assess their value based on agent performance. Users can also support agents through agent staking and provide feedback to help further optimize the agents.

Theoriq has received over $10 million in funding from companies such as Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, and HTX Ventures. Recently, the platform has also launched an incentive testnet, with the mainnet expected to go live soon.

Polychain Capital Leads Investment — Talus Network

Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed for decentralized AI agents, aiming to provide autonomous execution and management capabilities for AI agents in multiple domains (such as DeFi, gaming, DAOs, etc.). The Talus Network adopts the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM for blockchain infrastructure. The technology stack of Talus Network includes the Nexus Agent Framework, Python SDK, and off-chain services, all of which are designed to provide developers with flexibility, performance, and security to support them in building decentralized AI solutions.

The Talus Network aims to provide users with an infrastructure to create and deploy AI agents. These intelligent agents can optimize liquidity strategies in DeFi and 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 other companies, bringing the platform's valuation to $1.5 billion post-funding. This funding round will be used to further develop the Talus ecosystem, including Protochain, the Nexus framework, and the development of the "AI dating experience" application.

Prior to this, Talus had completed a $3 million seed funding round in February 2023, also led by Polychain Capital.

The Talus Agent has the ability to autonomously manage smart contracts and can perform tasks in various domains, such as portfolio optimization and MEV protection in DeFi, financial management and allocation in DAOs, automated NPC management and testing in games. The Talus Agent will become an asset on the blockchain that users can collectively own and monetize, facilitating the tokenization of decentralized AI agents.

In addition, the Talus Network has also launched an interactive blockchain application called AI Bae, which is an app that provides an "AI dating experience." Users can interact with AI companions called "Baes," generate unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts, and the app offers real-time chats, Polymarket-style betting features, and meme-token elements, allowing users to bet on the outcome of dates and even turn Baes into tokens.

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