What AI Agent projects has VC supported?

Author:Husband , Odaily Planet Daily

In the past two months, the AI ​​Agent sector has experienced rapid development, and projects represented by ai16z have brought considerable wealth returns to the market. At the same time, many well-known institutions are unanimously optimistic about the prospects of combining AI and encryption when predicting trends in 2025. Institutions such as DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari have regarded AI+Crypto as an important future development direction.

Different from projects under the traditional financing model, the outbreak of the AI ​​Agent sector was initially launched in the form of memes on the chain. This feature makes the participation of retail investors far exceed that of VCs. Compared with the private financing of previous projects, this fair launch method is more fair and transparent, attracting the attention of a large number of investors. However, although the absence of VC involvement seems to make the market more equal and open, can we conclude that the absence of VC involvement 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, VC attention has declined. This is caused by the profit-seeking nature of capital and the exit mechanism. But the role of VCs should not be ignored, especially during the early stages of due diligence in a project. VC's in-depth due diligence can help investors filter out potential high-risk projects and avoid too many blind investments. In addition, project parties with strong funds are usually able to focus more on technological innovation in the initial development stage, and often have more professional and efficient capabilities in the project's publicity and later operations, which are not possible for most on-chain meme projects. Comparative advantage.

Therefore, taken together, the investment opportunities in the AI ​​Agent sector are not limited to on-chain meme projects. The support of VC funds also has its unique advantages. By taking stock of AI Agent concept projects invested in the primary market in the past six months, Odaily Planet Daily hopes to provide readers with diversified investment options. Whether it is a VC project or an on-chain meme project, as long as you can correctly grasp the trend, you will have profit opportunities.

Coinbase Ventures and Visa co-invest – Payman

Payman is an AI-to-user payment platform designed to provide payment capabilities to AI so that it can pay users to complete tasks (such as marketing, etc.). The platform supports fiat currency and USDC stable currency payments, providing a convenient capital flow channel for the interaction between AI and users.

Core functions:

• Easy integration: Payman’s API allows users to provide funds to the AI ​​and start executing tasks in seconds.

• Powerful dashboard: The platform has a built-in spending limit function to help manage AI budgets, while monitoring AI spending through sophisticated task tracking.

• Flexible task posting: AI can easily assign tasks to human users who need to complete the tasks, or post tasks to the platform’s marketplace.

Platform highlights:

• Human market: Payman provides an exclusive market for artificial intelligence to help it find users to complete tasks that it cannot complete alone, or that require assistance in certain areas.

• Multiple payment methods: Whether the AI ​​chooses to pay users using fiat currencies, cryptocurrencies or via bank accounts, Payman has the support to ensure the payment process is convenient and secure.

Payman enables artificial intelligence to pay users for completing tasks. The specific steps are as follows:

• Add funds to the AI ​​wallet: First, log in to the platform, create an AI agent and recharge its wallet.

• Integrate Payman API into AI: Start using the platform by integrating Payman’s API to provide funds to AI.

• AI publishes tasks: AI agents publish tasks to the market, inviting users to participate and complete tasks.

• Webhooks notify task completion: Webhooks provided by Payman will notify the AI ​​agent after the task is completed to help it optimize task processing and execution.

Payman has rich application scenarios. For example, in product management, AI agents can optimize product development by paying for user feedback; 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 In marketing strategies, influencers can also be paid to perform 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 impetus into various industries and promoted deep 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 well-known venture capital institutions such as Visa, Coinbase Ventures and The Spartan Group. The project was successfully selected into Binance Labs' MVB accelerator program as early as July last year. Tyllen Bicakcic, co-founder of Payman, previously held senior developer relations positions at the Uniswap Foundation and the Flow public chain.

Coinbase Ventures and a16z co-invest – Skyfire

Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed for the AI ​​economy. It is committed to providing a global instant and open payment system for AI agents, supporting fully autonomous cross-AI agents, language models (LLM), data platforms, and service provision. transactions of merchants and other goods and services. All transactions will be paid through the stable currency USDC to ensure the stability and liquidity of transactions.

Skyfire's payment network can connect AI agents and service providers around the world, allowing AI agents to make efficient payments autonomously and enjoy digital services, 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, greatly improving efficiency and automation.

Skyfire completed an $8.5 million seed round in August last year, with participation from well-known institutions such as Circle, Ripple and Gemini. Later, it received a strategic investment of $1 million from Coinbase Ventures and a16z CSX, bringing the total financing to $9.5 million. a16z Crypto has announced that its fall 2024 crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City, with Skyfire successfully selected as one of the 21 startups in the batch.

Skyfire’s payments network runs on the USDC stablecoin and is publicly backed by Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire. Skyfire is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with future plans to expand to other public chains.

Skyfire was founded by a former Ripple executive. Co-founder and CEO Amir Sarhangi said that traditional payment systems cannot meet the needs of AI agents, and cryptocurrency and blockchain provide an ideal solution - able to provide micro-transactions around the clock. , high-efficiency and low-cost transaction services. Skyfire’s team is already working with multiple customers, including parts manufacturers and AI infrastructure providers in Indian automotive service centers, and is in talks with multiple Large Language Models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI proxy payment solution.

CMT Digital leads the round - Axal

Axal focuses on building verifiably autonomous intelligent agent networks, aiming to enable intelligent agents to perform a variety of tasks. From complex trading strategies to community interaction, users only need to define requirements through simple natural language or programming interfaces, and Axal is responsible for the source of agents, bidding auctions, and payment processing.

Axal has completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round led by CMT Digital, with other backers including a16z Crypto Startup School, Escape Velocity, IDG Vietnam, Artichoke Capital, Trident Digital, Blockchain Builders Fund, Blockhunters Group, Echo and Mentat Group and many other institutions and numerous angel investors.

Axal also launched its first product - Axal Autopilot, an intelligent agent-driven trading automation platform designed to help cryptocurrency holders create personalized trading strategies. The platform provides functions such as price tracking, on-chain trade execution and revenue management, through which users can manage their crypto assets more efficiently.

Hack VC led the investment - Theoriq

Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent base layer that provides powerful support for machine learning and related complex data-driven calculations. It is committed to applying machine learning to fields such as DeFi, games, 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, it allows autonomous AI agents to interact and collaborate with each other, thereby improving their capabilities and capabilities when performing certain tasks. productive forces. The platform encourages agents to collaborate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialized trade in a globalized economy, resulting in more efficient task completion.

The Theoriq platform creates a reward system for AI agents, including two important concepts:

• Proof of Contribution: Agents are rewarded for the useful work they do.

• Proof of Collaboration: Agents are rewarded for collaborating with other agents on tasks.

These agents have access to data, computation, digital assets as well as physical assets, and can make and receive payments on-chain. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool that will allow users to build their own professional agents without a technical background. These agents have a wide range of application scenarios, and the latest version of Claude has improved computer performance, significantly improving the functionality of the AI ​​agents.

At the same time, the platform has set up a governance mechanism for malicious agents and evaluates agents through a ranking system. Users can judge the value of agents based on their performance. Users can also fund through staking agents and provide feedback to help further optimize the agent.

Theoriq has received more than $10 million in funding from the likes of 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 led the round - Talus Network

Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed specifically for decentralized AI agents. It is committed to providing autonomous execution and management functions for AI agents in multiple fields (such as DeFi, games, DAO, etc.). The Talus Network uses the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as the blockchain infrastructure. The Talus Network's technology stack includes the Nexus agent framework, Python SDK and off-chain services. All these tools are designed to provide developers with flexibility, performance and security. , supporting them in building decentralized AI solutions.

The Talus network provides users with an infrastructure 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 to help players or guilds improve efficiency.

Talus Network announced the completion of US$6 million in financing on November 26 last year. Polychain Capital led the investment, and Foresight Ventures, Animoca and other companies participated. After financing, the platform's valuation reached US$150 million. This round of financing will be used to further develop Talus’ ecosystem, including the development of Protochain, Nexus framework and “AI dating experience” applications.

Previously, Talus had completed a $3 million seed round of financing in February 2023, also led by Polychain Capital.

Talus agents have the ability to autonomously manage smart contracts and can perform tasks in multiple areas, such as portfolio optimization and MEV protection in DeFi, financial management and appropriation in DAO, and automated NPC management and testing in games. Talus agents will become assets on the blockchain that can be jointly owned and monetized by users, promoting the economicization of decentralized AI agents.

In addition, Talus Network also launched an interactive blockchain application called AI Bae, an application that provides an "AI dating experience." Users can interact with AI companions named "Baes," who generate unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts. The app offers live chat, a Polymarket-style betting feature, and meme-token elements that allow users to place bets on the outcome of their dates, and even Convert Baes into tokens.