Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Fu Ruo (@vincent 31515173)
In the past two months, the AI Agent sector has experienced rapid development, with projects represented by ai16z bringing considerable wealth returns to the market. Meanwhile, several well-known institutions predict a promising future for the combination of AI and crypto in 2025, with firms such as DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari identifying AI+Crypto as an important direction for future development.
Unlike projects under traditional financing models, the explosion of the AI Agent sector initially unfolded on-chain in the form of memes, which greatly increased retail participation compared to VC. This fair launch method has higher fairness and transparency compared to previous projects' private financing, attracting significant attention from investors. However, while the absence of VC involvement may seem to make the market more equal and open, can we assert that the absence of VC participation is necessarily a good thing?
In fact, although VC-funded projects have faced token price pressure due to factors such as token unlocks in recent years, and VC's attention has decreased, this is driven by the profit-seeking nature of capital and exit mechanisms. However, the role of VC should not be overlooked, especially in the due diligence phase of early projects. Deep due diligence by VC can help investors filter out potential high-risk projects and avoid excessive blind investments. In addition, well-funded project parties can usually focus more on technological innovation in the early development stage and 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, 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 that received primary market investment in the past six months, Odaily Planet Daily hopes to provide readers with diverse investment choices. Whether VC projects or on-chain meme projects, as long as the trends are correctly grasped, there are opportunities for profit.
Coinbase Ventures and Visa jointly invested - Payman
Payman is a payment platform from AI to users, aimed at providing payment capabilities for AI so it can pay users for completing tasks (such as marketing, etc.). The platform supports both fiat currency and USDC stablecoin payments, providing a convenient flow of funds for interactions between AI and users.
Core features:
Easy integration: Payman's API allows users to fund AI in seconds and start executing tasks.
Powerful dashboard: The platform has built-in spending limit features to help manage AI budgets while monitoring AI spending through sophisticated task tracking.
Flexible task posting: AI can easily assign tasks to users who need to complete them or post tasks to the platform's marketplace.
Platform Highlights:
Human Market: Payman provides a dedicated market for artificial intelligence, helping it find users to complete tasks it cannot accomplish independently or require assistance in certain areas.
Multiple payment options: Whether artificial intelligence chooses to use fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or pay users through bank accounts, Payman can provide support to ensure a convenient and secure payment process.
Payman enables artificial intelligence to pay users for completing tasks, with specific steps as follows:
Adding funds to the AI wallet: First, log in to the platform, create an AI agent, and recharge its wallet.
Integrate the Payman API into AI: By integrating Payman's API, provide funds to AI and start using the platform.
AI publishes tasks: AI agents post tasks to the marketplace, inviting users to participate and complete tasks.
Webhooks notify task completion: The Webhooks provided by Payman notify AI agents upon task completion, helping them optimize task handling and execution.
Payman has a diverse range of application scenarios. For example, in product management, AI agents can optimize product development by paying users for feedback; in the interview process, AI can pay candidates to complete tasks and analyze results to improve recruitment efficiency; in marketing and growth, AI can not only devise marketing strategies but also pay influencers to execute tasks, thereby expanding brand influence; in engineering, AI can pay experts to review code, ensuring accuracy and efficiency. Through these applications, Payman injects new momentum into various industries, promoting deep collaboration between AI and users.
Payman announced the completion of $3 million in pre-seed financing on August 8 last year, with investors including well-known venture capital firms such as Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group. The project was successfully selected for the Binance Labs MVB accelerator program as early as July last year. Payman's co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic has held key developer relations positions at the Uniswap Foundation and Flow public chain.
Coinbase Ventures and a16z jointly invested - Skyfire
Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed for the AI economy, dedicated to providing AI agents with a global, instant, and open payment system that supports fully autonomous transactions among AI agents, language models (LLMs), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be processed through the USDC stablecoin to ensure stability and liquidity.
Skyfire's payment network connects AI agents and service providers worldwide, enabling AI agents to autonomously make efficient payments for digital services ranging from data analysis to content creation, and complex decision-making and problem-solving. Unlike traditional payment systems, Skyfire eliminates human intermediaries, allowing AI agents to make payments without human intervention, greatly enhancing efficiency and automation.
Skyfire completed $8.5 million in seed financing last August, with participation from well-known institutions such as Circle, Ripple, and Gemini. It later received a strategic investment of $1 million from Coinbase Ventures and a16z CSX, bringing its total financing to $9.5 million. a16z Crypto announced that its fall 2024 crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City, and Skyfire successfully joined this batch of 21 startups.
Skyfire's payment network operates 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, and 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—capable of offering around-the-clock microtransactions, high efficiency, and low-cost transaction services. The Skyfire team has already collaborated with several clients, including parts manufacturers for automotive service centers in India and AI infrastructure providers, and is negotiating with several large language models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solution.
CMT Digital leads - Axal
Axal focuses on building a verifiable autonomous intelligent agent network aimed at enabling 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, while Axal takes care of agent sourcing, bidding auctions, and payment processing.
Axal completed $2.5 million in pre-seed 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 among many 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 offers features such as price tracking, on-chain trade execution, and yield management, allowing users to manage their crypto assets more efficiently.
Hack VC leads - Theoriq
Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent foundation layer, providing strong support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computing, dedicated to applying machine learning in fields such as DeFi, gaming, social, and data infrastructure.
Theoriq was established in 2022. One of Theoriq's core services is to build a marketplace for AI agents and resources, allowing autonomous AI agents to interact and collaborate with each other through its forum called Infinity Hub, thereby enhancing their capabilities and productivity in executing certain tasks. The platform encourages agents to collaborate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialized trade in a globalized economy, achieving more efficient task completion.
The Theoriq platform has created a reward system for AI agents, which includes 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, compute, digital assets, and physical assets, and can make on-chain payments and receipts. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool that allows users to build their specialized agents without a technical background. These agents have a wide range of applications, and the latest release, Claude, has improved computational performance, significantly enhancing the capabilities of AI agents.
At the same time, 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 fund agents by staking them 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 launched an incentive testnet, and the mainnet is expected to go live soon.
Polychain Capital leads - 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 across multiple fields (such as DeFi, gaming, DAO, etc.). The Talus network uses the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as its blockchain infrastructure, and its technology stack includes the Nexus agent framework, Python SDK, and off-chain services, all aimed at providing developers with flexibility, performance, and security to support them in building decentralized AI solutions.
The Talus network provides users with 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, helping players or guilds improve efficiency.
Talus Network announced the completion of $6 million in financing on November 26 last year, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Animoca, and others, bringing the platform's valuation to $150 million post-financing. This round of financing will be used to further develop Talus's ecosystem, including Protochain, the Nexus framework, and the development of the 'AI dating experience' application.
Previously, Talus completed $3 million in seed financing in February 2023, also led by Polychain Capital.
Talus agents have the ability to autonomously manage smart contracts and can execute tasks in multiple areas, such as portfolio optimization and MEV protection in DeFi, financial management and grants in DAO, and automated NPC management and testing in games. Talus agents will become assets on the blockchain, which can be jointly owned and monetized by users, promoting the economic viability 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,' generating unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts. The app 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.
