Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Fu Ruo (@vincent31515173)

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, several well-known institutions have consistently viewed the prospects of AI and crypto integration positively when predicting trends for 2025. Institutions such as DWF Ventures, a16z, and Messari have all identified 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, a characteristic that has significantly increased retail participation compared to VCs. This fair launch method offers higher fairness and transparency compared to previous projects' private placements, attracting a large number of investors' attention. However, while the apparent absence of VC involvement seems to make the market more equal and open, can we assert that the lack of VC participation is necessarily a good thing?

In reality, despite the decline in VC attention due to factors such as token unlocks and price pressures on token investments in recent years, the role of VCs should not be overlooked, especially during the initial due diligence phase of projects. Deep due diligence by VCs can help investors filter out potentially high-risk projects, avoiding excessive blind investments. Additionally, well-funded project teams can often focus more on technological innovation during the early development phase and possess more professional and efficient capabilities in project promotion and later operations, advantages that most on-chain meme projects cannot match.

Therefore, overall, investment opportunities in the AI Agent sector are not limited to on-chain meme projects; the backing of VC funds also has its unique advantages. By reviewing AI Agent concept projects in the primary market over the past six months, Odaily Planet Daily aims to provide readers with diversified investment options. Whether it is a VC project or an on-chain meme project, as long as the trend is correctly grasped, there are opportunities for profit.

Coinbase Ventures and Visa co-invest in — Payman

Payman is an AI-to-user payment platform designed to provide payment capabilities for AI, enabling it to pay users for completing tasks (such as marketing, etc.). 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 AI budgets while monitoring AI spending through precise 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 Marketplace: Payman provides a dedicated marketplace for AI to find users to complete tasks it cannot accomplish independently or needs assistance in certain areas.

• Multiple Payment Methods: Whether AI chooses to use fiat currency, cryptocurrency, or pay users through bank accounts, Payman can provide support, ensuring a convenient and secure payment process.

Payman enables AI to pay users for completing tasks, with the following steps:

• Add funds to the AI wallet: First, log into the platform, create an AI agent, and fund its wallet.

• Integrate Payman API into AI: By integrating Payman's API, funds are provided to AI, allowing it to start using the platform.

• AI posts tasks: The AI agent posts tasks to the marketplace, inviting users to participate and complete the tasks.

• Webhooks notify task completion: Payman's provided webhooks notify the AI agent upon task completion, helping it optimize task handling and execution.

Payman's application scenarios are quite rich. For example, in product management, AI agents can optimize product development by paying users for feedback; in interview processes, AI can pay candidates to complete tasks and analyze results to improve recruitment efficiency; in marketing and growth, AI can not only formulate marketing strategies but also pay influencers to execute tasks, thereby expanding brand influence; in engineering, AI can pay experts to review code, ensuring 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 investors including Visa, Coinbase Ventures, and The Spartan Group among other well-known venture capital institutions. The project successfully entered Binance Labs' MVB accelerator program as early as July last year. Payman's co-founder Tyllen Bicakcic previously held key developer relations positions at Uniswap Foundation and Flow public chain.

Coinbase Ventures and a16z co-invest in — Skyfire

Skyfire is an innovative payment solution designed for the AI economy, aiming to provide AI agents with a global, instant, and open payment system that supports fully autonomous transactions between AI agents, language models (LLM), data platforms, service providers, and other goods and services. All transactions will be paid in the stablecoin USDC, ensuring stability and liquidity.

Skyfire's payment network connects AI agents and service providers globally, enabling efficient payments for AI agents from data analysis to content creation, and complex decision-making and problem-solving, allowing them to enjoy digital services autonomously. Unlike traditional payment systems, Skyfire eliminates human intermediaries, allowing AI agents to make payments without human intervention, significantly enhancing efficiency and automation.

Skyfire completed an $8.5 million seed round of financing last August, with investments 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 crypto startup accelerator program will launch in New York City in the fall of 2024, and Skyfire successfully made the list of 21 startups selected for this batch.

Skyfire's payment network operates on the USDC stablecoin and has received public support from Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle. 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 cryptocurrency and blockchain provide an ideal solution—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 in discussions with multiple large language models (LLM) to adopt its USDC-based AI agent payment solution.

CMT Digital leads investment in — 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 handles the sourcing, bidding, and payment processing for the agents.

Axal has 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, along with numerous angel investors.

Axal has also launched its first product—Axal Autopilot, a trading automation platform driven by intelligent agents, designed to help 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 investment in — Theoriq

Theoriq is a modular, composable AI agent infrastructure layer that provides robust support for machine learning and related complex data-driven computations, dedicated to applying machine learning in areas such as DeFi, gaming, social, and data infrastructure.

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 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.

Theoriq's platform has created 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 conduct on-chain payments and receipts. Theoriq also plans to launch a no-code development tool that allows 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 and improving 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 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 also launched an incentive testnet, with the mainnet expected to go live soon.

Polychain Capital leads investment in — Talus Network

Talus Network is a high-throughput blockchain platform designed specifically for decentralized AI agents, dedicated to providing autonomous execution and management capabilities for AI agents across various fields such as DeFi, gaming, and DAOs. The Talus network utilizes the Sui Move programming language and MoveVM as its blockchain infrastructure. The technology 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 the building of decentralized AI solutions.

Talus Network provides users with the 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 a $6 million financing round 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. The funds will be used to further develop Talus's ecosystem, including the Protochain, Nexus framework, and the development of 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 can execute 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.

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 known as "Baes," generating unique Baes by connecting their TikTok accounts. The application 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.

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