Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author | Fu Howe ( @vincent 31515173 )
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 optimistic about the prospects of combining AI and encryption when predicting the trends in 2025. Institutions such as DWF Ventures, a16z and Messari have regarded AI+Crypto as an important development direction in the future.
Unlike projects under the traditional financing model, the outbreak of the AI Agent sector initially unfolded in the form of a meme on the chain, a feature that made the participation of retail investors far exceed that of VCs. This fair launch method has higher fairness and transparency than the private financing of previous projects, and has attracted 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 therefore assert that the absence of VC participation is definitely a good thing?
In fact, although VC-invested projects have faced token price pressures in recent years due to factors such as token unlocking, VC’s attention has declined, which is due to the profit-seeking nature of capital and the exit mechanism. However, the role of VC should not be ignored, especially in the early due diligence stage of the project. VC’s in-depth due diligence can help investors filter out potential high-risk projects and avoid too much blind investment. In addition, well-funded project parties are usually able to focus more on technological innovation in the early development stage, and often have more professional and efficient capabilities in the promotion and later operation of the project, which are advantages that most on-chain meme projects cannot match.
Therefore, in general, 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 reviewing 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, there are opportunities to make profits.
Coinbase Ventures and Visa jointly invest in Payman
Payman is an AI-to-user payment platform that aims to provide payment capabilities for AI so that it can pay users for completing tasks (such as marketing, etc.). The platform supports fiat currency and USDC stablecoin payments, providing a convenient channel for capital flow for interactions between AI and users.
Core features:
Easy Integration: Payman’s API allows users to provide funds to the AI in seconds and start performing tasks.
Powerful dashboard: The platform has built-in spending limits to help manage AI budgets, while monitoring AI spending through sophisticated task tracking.
Flexible task publishing: AI can easily assign tasks to users who need to complete tasks, or publish tasks to the platforms marketplace.
Platform highlights:
Human Marketplace: Payman provides a dedicated marketplace for AI to find users to complete tasks it cannot do on its own or needs assistance in certain areas.
Multiple payment methods: Whether the AI chooses to pay users using fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or through a bank account, Payman can support it, ensuring the payment process is convenient and secure.
Payman enables AI 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 top up its wallet.
Integrate Payman API into AI: Start using the platform by providing funds to AI by integrating Payman’s API.
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 task completion, helping it optimize task processing and execution.
Payman has a wide range of 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 develop marketing strategies, but also pay influencers to perform tasks, thereby expanding brand influence; in the engineering field, AI can review the code by paying experts to ensure its accuracy and efficiency. Through these applications, Payman has injected new impetus into various industries and promoted the 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 for Binance Labs MVB accelerator program as early as July last year. Paymans co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic has held important positions in developer relations at the Uniswap Foundation and Flow public chain.
Coinbase Ventures and a16z jointly invest in 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 across AI agents, language models (LLMs), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be paid in stablecoin USDC to ensure the stability and liquidity of transactions.
Skyfires payment network connects AI agents and service providers around the world, enabling AI agents to make efficient payments 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 a seed round of financing of $8.5 million in August last year, with well-known institutions such as Circle, Ripple and Gemini participating in the investment. It later received a strategic investment of $1 million from Coinbase Ventures and a16z CSX, with a total financing amount of $9.5 million. a16z Crypto announced that its crypto startup accelerator program will be launched 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 runs on the USDC stablecoin and has received public support from Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire. Skyfire is currently deployed on the Polygon network, with plans to expand to other public chains in the future.
Skyfire was founded by former Ripple executives. 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 - capable of providing 24-hour micro-transactions, high-efficiency and low-cost transaction services. Skyfires team has worked with several customers, including parts manufacturers and AI infrastructure providers for Indian auto service centers, and is negotiating with multiple large language models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solution.
Axal led by CMT Digital
Axal focuses on building verifiable autonomous intelligent agent networks, aiming to enable intelligent agents to perform a variety of tasks. From complex trading strategies to community interactions, users only need to define their 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 of financing, led by CMT Digital. Other supporters include a16z Crypto Startup School, Escape Velocity, IDG Vietnam, Artichoke Capital, Trident Digital, Blockchain Builders Fund, Blockhunters Group, Echo and Mentat Group, as well as many 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 price tracking, on-chain transaction execution, and yield management, allowing users to manage their crypto assets more efficiently.
Hack VC leads the investment - Theoriq
Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent base layer that provides powerful support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computing, and is committed to applying machine learning to DeFi, games, social and data infrastructure.
Theoriq was founded in 2022. One of Theoriqs 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 productivity in performing certain tasks. The platform encourages agents to cooperate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialized trade in the globalized economy, thereby achieving more efficient task completion.
Theoriq platform creates a reward system for AI agents, which includes 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 can access data, computing, digital assets, and physical assets, and can make and receive payments on the chain. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool that allows users to build their own professional agents without a technical background. These agents have a wide range of application scenarios. The latest release, Claude, improves computer performance, which significantly improves the functionality of AI agents.
At the same time, the platform has set up a governance mechanism for malicious agents, evaluating agents through a ranking system, and users can judge the value of agents based on their performance. Users can also fund agents by staking them and provide feedback to help further optimize the agents.
Theoriq has received more than $10 million in funding from companies such as Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, and HTX Ventures. Recently, the platform also launched an incentivized testnet and is expected to launch the mainnet soon.
Polychain Capital led the investment — Talus Network
Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed for decentralized AI agents, dedicated to providing autonomous execution and management capabilities for AI agents in multiple fields (such as DeFi, games, DAOs, etc.). The Talus network uses the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as its blockchain infrastructure. The Talus networks technology stack includes the Nexus agent framework, Python SDK, and off-chain services. All of these tools are designed to provide developers with flexibility, performance, and security to support them in building decentralized AI solutions.
The Talus Network provides users with an infrastructure for creating and deploying 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 on November 26 last year that it had completed a $6 million financing round, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Animoca and other companies. The platforms valuation reached $150 million after the financing. This round of financing will be used to further develop the Talus ecosystem, including the development of Protochain, Nexus framework and AI dating experience applications.
Previously, Talus 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 grants in DAOs, 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 has launched an interactive blockchain application called AI Bae, which is an application that provides an AI dating experience. Users can interact with AI companions called Baes. Users generate unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts. The application provides real-time chat, Polymarket-style betting functions, and meme-token elements, allowing users to bet on dating results and even convert Baes into tokens.
