The Web3 and AI Funding Bulletin | May I
Hello and welcome!
This is the Web3 and AI Funding Bulletin, covering the latest investments in companies converging blockchain and artificial intelligence. VCs' enthusiasm seems to have cooled down a bit over the first half of May, although AI agents and privacy and confidentiality-enhancing infrastructure continue to draw attention.
Thank you for being here! Let's dive in!
Lagrange Attracts $13.2M to Launch ZK Coprocessor
The hyper-parallel ZK coprocessor builder Lagrange closed a $13.2M seed funding. The round was led by Peter Thiel's venture firm Founders Fund, with participation by Archetype Ventures, 1kx, Maven11, Fenbushi Capital, and Mantle Ecosystem Fund.
The infrastructure Lagrange is building allows for verifiable, thanks to the use of zero-knowledge proofs, and data-intensive off-chain computations. Its ZK coprocessor is expected to launch some time in 2024.
This latest funding will accelerate the development of Lagrange's ZK Coprocessor, which drastically increases the scale of computation available to dApp developers and unlocks new classes of use cases involving big datasets, like on-chain liquidity or even running AI/ML models.
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ChainML Raises $6.2M, Unveils Theoriq
The Web3 + AI research and development lab ChainML raised $6.2M in a seed extension round led by Hack VC, and supported by Foresight Ventures, Inception Capital, HTX Ventures, IOSG Ventures, LongHash Ventures, HashKey Capital, Chainlink, and others. The company will use the funding to expand its development and go-to-market teams.
Meanwhile, ChainML unveiled Theoriq, a modular base-layer blockchain focused on autonomous AI Agents. Theoriq's testnet is expected to go live this summer, with mainnet coming later in the year.
"We believe that our agentic base layer is going to be the point of value creation in web3 moving forward, enabling intuitive access to web3 value drivers from DeFi, infra and restaking to memecoins. We are partnering with resource providers in DePIN compute, inference and data," [CEO Ron] Bodkin said.
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Arcium Gets $5.5M to Build Confidential Computing Network
Arcium received a strategic funding of $5.5M by Greenfield Capital to build a trustless, verifiable, and performant confidential computing network. Other participants in the round include funds Coinbase Ventures, Heartcore Capital, LongHash Ventures, L2 Iterative Ventures, Staking Facilities, Smape Capital, Everstake and angels like Solana's Anatoly Yakovenko.
Key verticals across Web 3, including DeFi, DePIN, RWAs, AI, and more, can access our confidential computing network to encrypt specific parts of an application or create fully confidential applications on-chain. Initially launching on Solana, we will roll out a Private Incentivized Testnet followed by a Public Testnet to bootstrap the network and empower a range of encrypted applications before the mainnet launch.
Arcium implements Multiparty Computation Execution Environments (MXEs) that combine MPC, homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs, and more to enable computation on encrypted data.
Web3 + AI OS Hemera Attracts $2.6M of Funding
The AI-powered decentralized programmable indexing network Hemera received a $2.6M capital injection by Nomad Capital, Lingfeng Capital, Chainlink, and others.
Hemera strives to act as the operating system of Web3.
It serves a wide range of use cases, from blockchain explorers to social graphs, leveraging its modular architecture and high scalability to address fragmentation issues and facilitate interoperability across web3.
A couple of weeks ago, I covered Hemera's analytics platform SocialScan and prominent partnerships with Aethir and Nimble.
Web3 + AI Gaming Studio Anomaly Pockets $1.5M
Decasonic, Shima Capital, Round13 Capital, and angel investor Zeneca have supported the AI-powered gaming infrastructure developer Anomaly with an investment of $1.5M. Anomaly is building a node DePIN, a Layer-3 blockchain, and an AI game engine to create next-generation immersive experiences.
AI DeFi Platform 0xGen Closes Strategic Funding
AI-driven Decentralized Finance (DeFi) platform 0xGen obtained a strategic funding of undisclosed amount. The investors include fellow Web3 projects Bella Protocol and Phoenix, hedge fund Principle68, and tech firms Tensor Investment Corporation and X Labs.
Disclaimer: None of this should or could be considered financial advice. You should not take my words for granted, rather, do your own research (DYOR) and share your thoughts to create a fruitful discussion.
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