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. At the same time, many well-known institutions have a positive outlook on the prospects of the integration of AI and crypto when forecasting trends for 2025, with institutions like DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari all considering AI + Crypto as an important direction for future development.
Unlike traditional financing models, the explosion of the AI Agent sector initially unfolded on-chain in the form of memes, a characteristic that significantly increased retail participation compared to VCs. This fair launch approach offers higher fairness and transparency compared to private financing of previous projects, attracting a large number of investors' attention. However, while the absence of VC involvement seems to make the market more equitable and open, can we assert that the lack of VC participation is necessarily a good thing?
In fact, although VC-funded projects have faced token price pressures due to factors like token unlocking in recent years, resulting in a decrease in VC interest, the role of VC should not be underestimated, especially in the early due diligence phase of projects. In-depth due diligence by VCs can help investors filter out potential high-risk projects, avoiding excessive blind investment. Additionally, well-funded project teams can usually focus more on technological innovation during the initial development phase, and often possess more professional and efficient capabilities in project promotion and later operations, which are advantages that most on-chain meme projects cannot compare to.
Therefore, overall, investment opportunities in the AI Agent sector are not limited to on-chain meme projects; the support of VC funding also has its unique advantages. By reviewing AI Agent concept projects in the primary market over the past six months, Odaily Planet Daily hopes to provide readers with diverse investment choices. Whether it is a VC project or an on-chain meme project, as long as the trend is correctly grasped, there are profit opportunities.
Coinbase Ventures and Visa jointly invest - Payman
Payman is an AI-to-user payment platform aimed at providing payment capabilities for AI so that it can pay users to complete tasks (such as marketing). The platform supports payments in fiat currency and USDC stablecoin, 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 includes built-in spending limit features to help manage the AI budget while monitoring AI spending through precise task tracking.
Flexible Task Publishing: AI can easily assign tasks to users who need to complete them or publish 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 that it cannot accomplish independently or requires assistance in certain areas.
Multiple Payment Options: Whether AI chooses to use fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or pay users through a bank account, Payman can provide support, ensuring a smooth and secure payment process.
Payman enables artificial intelligence to pay users to complete tasks, with the following steps:
Add funds to the AI wallet: First, log into the platform, create an AI agent, and top up its wallet.
Integrate Payman API into AI: By integrating Payman's API, funds can be provided to AI to start using the platform.
AI publishes tasks: AI agents will publish tasks to the marketplace, inviting users to participate and complete tasks.
Webhooks notify task completion: Webhooks provided by Payman will notify the AI agents upon task completion, helping them 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 results to improve hiring efficiency; in marketing and growth, AI can not only develop marketing strategies but can also pay influencers to execute tasks, thereby expanding brand influence; in engineering, AI can pay experts to review code to ensure its 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 a $3 million pre-seed round of financing on August 8 last year, with investments from well-known venture capital institutions including Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group. The project successfully entered Binance Labs' MVB Accelerator program back in July last year. Payman's co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic previously held key roles in developer relations at Uniswap Foundation and Flow public chain.
Coinbase Ventures and a16z jointly invest - Skyfire
Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed specifically for the AI economy, dedicated to providing AI agents with a global, instant, and open payment system that supports fully autonomous transactions across AI agents, language models (LLMs), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be paid in the USDC stablecoin, ensuring stability and liquidity.
Skyfire's payment network can connect AI agents and service providers worldwide, enabling AI agents to autonomously make efficient payments for 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, significantly improving efficiency and automation levels.
Skyfire completed a $8.5 million seed round of financing last August, with participation from well-known institutions such as Circle, Ripple, and Gemini, followed by a strategic investment of $1 million from Coinbase Ventures and a16z CSX, bringing the total financing amount to $9.5 million. a16z Crypto announced that its 2024 fall crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City, and Skyfire has successfully been selected as one of the 21 startups in this batch.
Skyfire's payment network operates based 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 and 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 24/7 microtransactions, high efficiency, and low-cost transaction services. The Skyfire team has already collaborated with multiple clients, including parts manufacturers for automotive service centers in India and AI infrastructure providers, and is in discussions with several large language models (LLMs) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solutions.
CMT Digital leads the investment - Axal
Axal focuses on building a verifiable autonomous intelligent agent network, aiming to enable intelligent agents to perform various tasks. From complex trading strategies to community interactions, users only need to define their needs through simple natural language or programming interfaces, while Axal is responsible for sourcing agents, bidding auctions, and processing payments.
Axal completed a $2.5 million pre-seed round of 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 other institutions and angel investors.
Axal has also launched its first product - Axal Autopilot, which is a trading automation platform driven by intelligent agents, designed to help cryptocurrency holders create personalized trading strategies. The platform provides features such as price tracking, on-chain trade execution, and yield management, enabling users to manage their crypto assets more efficiently.
Hack VC leads the investment - Theoriq
Theoriq is a modular and composable foundation for AI agents, providing robust support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computations, dedicated to applying machine learning in fields such as DeFi, gaming, social, and data infrastructure.
Theoriq was founded 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 named Infinity Hub, thus enhancing their capabilities and productivity in executing certain tasks. The platform encourages agents to cooperate by sharing their expertise, similar to specialized trade in the global economy, resulting in more efficient task completion.
The Theoriq platform has created a reward system for AI agents, which includes two important concepts:
Proof of Contribution: Agents earn rewards for the useful work they do.
Proof of Collaboration: Agents earn rewards for collaborating with other agents on tasks.
These agents can access data, computing, digital assets, and physical assets, and can conduct on-chain payments and receipts. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool, allowing users to build their own specialized agents without a technical background. The applications of these agents are wide-ranging, with the latest released version Claude significantly enhancing computing performance, thereby greatly improving the capabilities of AI agents.
At the same time, the platform has set up a governance mechanism for malicious agents, evaluating agents through a ranking system, allowing users to assess their value based on their performance. Users can also fund agents by staking them and provide feedback to help further optimize the agents.
Theoriq has raised over $10 million in funding from companies such as Hack VC, Foresight Ventures, and HTX Ventures. Recently, the platform also launched an incentive testnet, with the mainnet expected to go live soon.
Polychain Capital leads the investment - Talus Network
Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed specifically for decentralized AI agents, committed to providing autonomous execution and management functions for AI agents across multiple domains (such as DeFi, gaming, DAO, etc.). The Talus network uses the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as its blockchain infrastructure, and the technical stack of Talus Network includes the Nexus agent framework, Python SDK, and off-chain services, all aimed at providing developers with flexibility, performance, and security to support their development of decentralized AI solutions.
The Talus network provides users with the infrastructure to create and deploy AI agents. These intelligent agents can optimize liquidity strategies in DeFi and act as automated resource-collecting agents in games, helping players or guilds improve efficiency.
Talus Network announced the completion of a $6 million financing round on November 26 last year, led by Polychain Capital, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Animoca, and others, with the post-financing valuation of the platform reaching $150 million. The funds will be used to further develop Talus's ecosystem, including the development of Protochain, Nexus framework, and the 'AI dating experience' application.
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 perform tasks across multiple domains, 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, co-owned and monetized by users, promoting the economic viability of decentralized AI agents.
Additionally, the 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 application offers real-time chat, Polymarket-style betting functions, and meme-token elements, allowing users to bet on dating outcomes and even convert Baes into tokens.
