Encrypting VC money, how can AI projects be “manufactured” in batches?
Author: Golem
Original title: I picked 5 cryptographic AI projects that raised millions of dollars and discovered...
The popularity of AI has caused VCs that are investing in Web3 out of proportion. On February 28, when Paradigm announced that it was planning to raise a new fund of up to 1.5 billion US dollars in the field of AI and robotics, I analyzed that this was an industry signal that crypto capital was shifting its focus from Web3 to AI. When the crypto industry had no good projects to invest in, AI became a new battleground for crypto capital. (Related reading:When Openclaw's Founder Advised Young People to Stay Away From Crypto）
But one thing I've overlooked is that good projects in the AI industry aren't the turn of crypto VCs to invest in. Investors who choose good projects also often look at “qualifications” and resources. A well-known crypto VC like Paradigm may also be able to squeeze into the first-tier AI investment community. Other small crypto VCs with no fame in the traditional financial world can only stare at the door and watch the big guys eat meat.
Can we just sit back and wait to die? Of course not. There are always more solutions than difficulties. Since you can't invest in a top-level AI project, then take a step back. Investing in AI-related projects in the crypto comfort zone is also considered to have bought a ferry ticket for the Zhang Era.
However, as the online joke suggests, a Web3 company only needs to change all the “loading...” in the product to “thinking...” to transform into a startup company involved with AI. Amid the anxiety of crypto VC, some Crypto+AI projects can get millions of dollars in financing with just a white paper and a product without PMF.
To illustrate this “industry abstraction,” I selected 5 examples of “paper AI projects” that have recently been funded.
Derivio: DEX without meme tools, not a good AI trading platform
One of the hottest examples is the announcement of completion on March 18$6 million in financingAI native trading platformDerivioThe investors, on the other hand, are a number of crypto VCs including YziLabs. However, the government also added a lowercase explanation to this financing, that is, 6 million US dollars is all the money it has raised so far, not the funds announced this time.
It's rare to see ultra-early projects announcing cumulative financing amounts, without mentioning the amount of new financing. Are you embarrassed to say that VC has given too little? Or was the PR released to coincide with AI transformation? Derivio is the 2023 Binance Labs (now YZiLabs), according to researchSixth Season Incubation ProjectAt the time, it was also a decentralized derivatives exchange on zkSync.
In 2024, Derivio launched the Ethereum L2 Derivio Network, and it also claims to be fully compatible with the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). It wanted to step on the development of both ecosystems, but unfortunately, it failed.
Today, if you click on Derivio's website, what you see is not the K-line chart of transactions, or the usual DEX swap page, but Pump.fun's chain scan monitoring.
Yes, you read that correctly. The main business model of this former centralized derivatives exchange and today's AI-native trading platform is to help Mr. P scan the chain. DEXs that don't use meme tools aren't good AI trading platforms. Plus, you can even buy tokenized US stocks on this platform.
Well, as an AI-native trading platform, Derivio always has to have AI-related features, but after clicking Agent in the upper left corner, the page that pops up is “COMING SOON”...
Although Derivio doesn't have anything right now, the vision it describes is still imaginative. In the article “The Last Generation of Human Traders” published by the X platform, it was written that most trading terminals were designed for humans. Derivio is building the first full-stack trading terminal designed for AI, and has independently developed a high-performance data flow engine from 0 to 1 to reduce the delay from “on-chain event” alerts to “front-end AI processing” to close to the physical limit.
After reading it, I also thought this was a great idea; it's not something the average person can do. So I checked with a recognizer and found that this article wasn't actually written by a human; it was created by AI. Derivio was certainly ahead of its time and replaced employees before AI replaced human traders.
Superpower: Disappearing AI Agent Products
superpowerIt is an AI agency revenue agreement that announced the completion of a pre-seed round of financing on March 6. Taisu Ventures, Paper Ventures, CatcherVC, and 280 Capital participated, but no specific amount was disclosed. Superpower aims to build a platform for AI agents to independently generate revenue, access financing channels, and increase capital.
To achieve such a big project vision, technology accumulation and continuous development are necessary, yet Superpower hasn't even finished a website. March 6th was not only the day they announced their funding, but also the day they posted their first post on their official X account.
First post on the official Superpower X account
Although Derivio doesn't have an AI agent, it still has something to interact with, but if you unfortunately open Superpower's official website, your vision will be severely impacted. Superpower's official website doesn't have any clickable buttons; only a series of “YOUR AGENT IS BROKE AF” is playing a slide show. I also don't understand what this sentence means because the slides are moving so fast that I don't even know if the last word is “AI” or “AF.”
In the link to Superpower's official X account, I also found a prediction market project called Prolly, and also wrote about how Agent can make money with Prolly. I wanted to try it out, but this product also requires an invitation code, so that's all. Of course, the post introducing the project on the Superpower homepage was also written by AI without exception.
finrob: A proprietary model for the cryptocurrency sector that cannot be used
FinrobIt is an AI-powered crypto market research platform that closed a $3.9 million seed round with Maven11, Placeholder, Archetype, Fabric Ventures, Dispersion Capital, and Node Capital on February 25. What is this project for? Simply put, it's a big conversational model. It's no different from the way ChatGPT and Gemini interact, and Finrob is connected to these models.
You asked what is the difference between talking to users directly with ChatGPT and Gemini. Finrob's answer is that it is designed specifically for the cryptocurrency sector, with real-time data integration, on-chain analysis, and special tools. Specifically, it integrates with CoinGecko for real-time price and market data, Glassnode for 200+ on-chain analysis, Tavily for web search and news, Perplexity for in-depth research, and other sources, including DeFilLama, Etherscan, and LunarCrush for social sentiment.
In other words, when Finrob connects these data sources to the free big model (Finrob doesn't support users choosing advanced models such as ChatGPT5.4), it can claim that it was designed specifically for the cryptocurrency sector, and it's worth $3.9 million. To put it another way, this is actually a lot less expensive than spending money on training big models.
Judging from the officially displayed use cases, the ultimate use of Finrob seems to be to give users investment advice. Without talking about whether AI can actually guide real trading decisions, will Finrob's intelligence using the free model really be higher than GPT5.4, Claude Opus 4.6, etc.? I thought Finrob would actually be better than ChatGPT in terms of getting token prices in real time, but I tried it and found that with just a squeak, ChatGPT5.4 can also get real-time BTC prices from CoinGecko.
After so many comments, I actually wanted to experience Finrob myself, but it didn't give me a chance. Whether I logged in with my email or wallet, the page showed an error.
PlutonAI: DefAI in the corner
PlutonAIIt is a DeFai platform designed to enable AI agents to analyze markets, optimize strategies, manage revenue opportunities, and perform complex on-chain operations on behalf of users. On February 17, PlutonAI closed a $2.7 million private funding round, led by kitchenvc, and HyperGPT participated.
In terms of project positioning, PlutonAI is a moderate Crypto+AI project. Let's not talk about whether DeFai actually has PMF, is secure, and can help users make money. Today, with AI technology rapidly iterating, it's actually quite easy for AI to complete on-chain operations instead of humans.
In particular, after the explosion of OpenClaw, there was a craving for raising lobster in the coin industry. Countless bloggers have shared how to install OpenClaw, how to make OpenClaw participate in on-chain transactions, or predict the market. At the same time, exchanges such as Binance and OKX have also launched trading tools/aids similar to AI Agent. (Related reading:Under the OpenClaw frenzy, CEX competes for AI Agent trading portal）
As a result, even DeFai can already be judged as a false proposition. I also wanted to experience the AI Agent on PlutonAI, but I still can't log in.
Unicity: the true master of painting cakes
UnicityIt is an infrastructure developer dedicated to building an “Agentic Autonomous Internet (Agentic Autonomous Internet)”. The dream is to enable billions of AI agents to perform trustless discoveries, transactions, and settlements at machine speed. On February 19, Unicity closed a $3 million seed round, led by Blockchange, with participation from Outlier Ventures and Tawasal.
This is another company with a big vision, and I specifically went to read their project white paper (not written by AI, after all) to know what kind of business they want to do. Overall, Unicity believes that the existing chain is unsuitable for AI high-frequency automated transactions and collaboration in terms of throughput, latency, privacy, and costs, so it is necessary to create an underlying network for AI agents. The specific solution is to move transactions to complete peer-to-peer transactions under the chain, only determine state changes to prevent “double flowers”, and use verifiable agents to monitor execution.
Compared to the projects listed above, Unicity sounds very serious, and may actually form a public chain ecosystem in the future, but what has Unicity, which was established in 2025, actually delivered so far? There is no testnet or zero ecosystem project. The project progress released on March 10 mentioned that it will launch a proxy operating system, AstriDos, so that tools such as Claude Code and OpenClaw can run on it, but in the end, whether anyone will use it is another matter.
Are crypto VCs stupid?
Of course, among the AI projects recently funded, there are solid projects. For example, RoboForce, which closed $52 million in financing on March 17 and was led by YZi Labs, is an AI robotics company that has nothing to do with the cryptographic field. The project is building physical AI. Hwang In-hoon also made this track one of the future directions during his speech at GTC 2026. At the same time, RoboForce robots did appear at the Nvidia GTC 2025.
There are also examples, such as Kled, which raised 5.5 million dollars on March 11, and VeryAI, which raised 10 million US dollars on March 12 and focused on building an AI agent identity system. They all not only fit the product market, but also have a real product ecosystem and performance delivery.
But there are very few such projects in the crypto industry. So the question is, are the other crypto VCs stupid? I know that many so-called AI projects don't have a product logic that actually works, so why are they still willing to pay for it?
The mystery lies in the mystery. The only thing crypto VC wants is the fluidity of the word AI. Although it can't be squeezed into the top project table to split the chips, the money must also be spent, so making some “AI doubles” in the context of cryptography is not a business. The project party only needs to be responsible for packaging itself as AI, and VC can put money in with their eyes closed. As long as the two parties can get the account back in the end, it's good AI.
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