I researched 5 cryptocurrency AI projects that raised millions in funding, and found...

Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

The boom of AI has already thrown VC firms investing in Web3 off balance. On February 28, Paradigm announced plans to raise a new fund focused on AI and robotics, with a target of up to $1.5 billion, and I analyzed this as a signal that crypto capital is shifting its focus from Web3 to AI. When there are no good projects in the crypto industry to invest in, AI, being a thriving industry, has become a new battlefield for crypto capital. (Related Reading:When the founder of Openclaw advises young people to stay away from Crypto)

However, what I overlooked is that good projects in the AI industry are not something crypto VCs can invest in. Good projects often look for investors based on their "qualifications" and resources. Established crypto VCs like Paradigm may still squeeze into the first-tier AI investment circle, but other small crypto VCs with no reputation in traditional finance just have to watch the big players eat well from the sidelines.

Are we to just sit and wait? Of course not. There are always more solutions than difficulties. Since top AI projects cannot be invested in, we can settle for projects at the intersection of AI within the crypto comfort zone to still grab a ticket for this era.

However, as jokes online tease, any Web3 company can transform into an AI-related startup simply by changing all the "loading..." in its product to "thinking...". Under the anxiety of crypto VCs, some Crypto + AI projects can secure funding in the millions of dollars with just a white paper and a product without PMF.

To illustrate this "industry abstraction," I have selected 5 recently funded "paper AI projects" as examples.

Derivio: A DEX that doesn't do Meme tools is not a good AI trading platform

A fresh example is the AI-native trading platform Derivio, which announced the completion of $6 million in funding on March 18, with investors including YZiLabs and other crypto VCs. However, the official announcement also included a small print stating that the $6 million is the total funds raised to date, not just the amount recently announced.

It is rare to see early-stage projects announcing total funding amounts without mentioning new funding. Is it because the amount given by VCs is too little to mention? Or is it just to align with the PR for an AI transformation? According to research, Derivio is a product of the sixth season of Binance Labs (now YZiLabs) incubator in 2023, and at that time, it was still a decentralized derivatives exchange on zkSync.

In 2024, Derivio launched the Ethereum L2 Derivio Network, claiming full compatibility with the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), aiming to develop in both ecosystems, but unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, it failed.

Nowadays, if you click into Derivio's website, you are greeted with a trading candlestick chart, not the typical swap page of a DEX, but rather the chain-monitoring of Pump.fun.

Yes, you read that right. This formerly centralized derivatives exchange, now an AI-native trading platform, has its main business model focused on helping users monitor the chain. A DEX that doesn't do Meme tools is not a good AI trading platform. Additionally, you can even buy tokenized US stocks on this platform.

As an AI-native trading platform, Derivio should have some AI-related functions, but when clicking on Agent in the upper left corner, the pop-up states "COMING SOON"……

Although Derivio currently has nothing, its envisioned goals are still imaginative. In an article published on the X platform titled "The Last Generation of Human Traders," it stated that most trading terminals are designed for humans, and Derivio is building the first full-stack trading terminal designed for AI, and has independently developed a high-performance data stream engine to compress the delay from "on-chain event" alerts to "front-end AI processing" to near the physical limit.

After reading through, I found this idea amazing, not something ordinary people can achieve. So, I checked with a recognizer and found that this article was indeed not written by a human, but created by AI. Derivio truly stands ahead by replacing human traders with AI before replacing employees.

Superpower: Disappearing AI agency product

Superpower is an AI agency revenue protocol that announced the completion of its pre-seed funding round on March 6, with Taisu Ventures, Paper Ventures, CatcherVC, and 280 Capital participating, but it did not disclose the specific amount. Superpower aims to build a platform for AI agents to autonomously generate income, obtain financing channels, and realize capital appreciation.

To achieve such a grand project vision, significant technical accumulation and continuous development are necessary, but Superpower hasn’t even completed its website yet. March 6 was not only the day they announced the funding but also the day their official X account posted its first message.

The first post from Superpower's official X account

Although Derivio lacks an AI Agent, at least it has something to interact with. However, if you unfortunately opened Superpower's official website, you would be seriously shocked visually. Superpower's website has no clickable buttons, only a series of "YOUR AGENT IS BROKE AF" cycling through as a slideshow. I also don't understand what this phrase means, as the slideshow changes too quickly for me to determine if the last word is "AI" or "AF".

In the link posted on Superpower's official X account, I also found a prediction market project named Prolly and wrote how Agents can earn money on this Prolly platform, which I intended to try, but this product requires an invitation code, so I had to give up. Of course, the post introducing the project on Superpower's homepage was also undoubtedly written by AI.

finrob: Unusable proprietary model in the cryptocurrency domain

Finrob is an AI-driven cryptocurrency market research platform that completed $3.9 million in seed funding on February 25, with participation from Maven11, Placeholder, Archetype, Fabric Ventures, Dispersion Capital, and Node Capital. So, what exactly does this project do? Simply put, it is a conversational large model, similar in interaction to ChatGPT and Gemini, and Finrob is connecting with those models.

If you ask what the difference is between interacting directly with ChatGPT or Gemini and Finrob, Finrob answers that it is tailored specifically for the cryptocurrency domain, equipped with real-time data integration, on-chain analytics, and specialized tools. Specifically, it integrates with CoinGecko for real-time price and market data, with Glassnode for over 200 types of on-chain analysis, with Tavily for web search and news, with Perplexity for in-depth research, and other sources including DefiLlama, Etherscan, and LunarCrush for social sentiment.

In other words, when Finrob connects free large models with these data sources (Finrob does not support users selecting advanced models like ChatGPT 5.4), it claims to be tailored specifically for the cryptocurrency domain, justifying its $3.9 million valuation. From another angle, this indeed saves a lot compared to paying to train a large model.

From the official use cases shown, Finrob's ultimate purpose seems to be to provide users with investment advice. Not to mention whether AI can actually guide real trading decisions, is the intelligence of Finrob using free models really superior to that of higher models like GPT 5.4 or Claude Opus 4.6? I initially thought Finrob would really outperform ChatGPT in obtaining real-time token prices, but when I tried it, I found that just a beep, and ChatGPT 5.4 could also retrieve the real-time price of BTC from CoinGecko.

After complaining so much, I actually wanted to experience finrob myself, but it wouldn't let me. No matter whether I logged in with an email or a wallet, the page kept showing an error.

PlutonAI: DeFAI in the corner

PlutonAI is a DeFAI platform aimed at allowing AI agents to analyze markets, optimize strategies, manage yield opportunities, and perform complex on-chain operations on behalf of users. On February 17, PlutonAI completed $2.7 million in a private funding round, led by kitchenvc, with HyperGPT participating.

From the project's positioning, PlutonAI appears to be a typical Crypto + AI project. Without discussing whether DeFAI has PMF, safety, or the ability to help users make money, in today's rapidly developing AI technology, allowing AI to perform on-chain operations has indeed become a straightforward task.

Especially after OpenClaw gained massive popularity, the crypto world has sparked a frenzy over raising lobsters, and countless bloggers have already shared how to install OpenClaw and how to make it participate in on-chain trading or forecast the market. At the same time, exchanges like Binance and OKX have also launched similar AI Agent trading tools/assistants. (Related Reading:Amid the OpenClaw craze, CEXs vie for AI Agent trading entrances)

Therefore, even DeFAI can already be deemed a false proposition. I also wanted to experience the AI Agent on PlutonAI, but unfortunately, I still couldn't log in.

Unicity: Real master of painting promises

Unicity is an infrastructure development company dedicated to building the "Agentic Autonomous Internet," aspiring to enable billions of AI agents to discover, trade, and settle without trust at machine speed. On February 19, Unicity completed $3 million in seed funding, led by Blockchange, with Outlier Ventures and Tawasal participating.

This is another company with big dreams. To understand what their business actually entails, I specifically read their project white paper (finally not written by AI). Overall, Unicity believes that existing chains are unsuitable for AI high-frequency automated trading and collaboration in terms of throughput, latency, privacy, and costs, thus aiming to create an underlying network geared towards AI Agents. The specific proposal is to move all transactions off-chain to be completed point-to-point, while only confirming state changes on-chain to prevent double spends, paired with verifiable Agents to oversee execution.

Compared to the previously listed projects, Unicity sounds very serious and may indeed form a public chain ecosystem in the future, but what has Unicity, established in 2025, actually delivered? No test network, zero ecological projects. In the project progress published on March 10, it mentioned intending to launch the agent operating system, AstridOS, allowing tools like Claude Code and OpenClaw to run on top of it, but whether anyone will actually use it is another matter altogether.

Are crypto VCs foolish?

Of course, among the recently funded AI projects, there are indeed solid projects. For example, RoboForce, which completed $52 million in funding on March 17, led by YZi Labs, is an AI robotics company with no connection to the crypto field; the project is constructing physical AI, and Jensen Huang also highlighted this track as one of the future directions in his GTC 2026 speech. Meanwhile, RoboForce's robots did make an appearance at NVIDIA GTC 2025.

Additionally, there are Kled, which secured $5.5 million for an AI data marketplace on March 11, and VeryAI, which raised $10 million on March 12, focusing on building an AI Agent identity system. They all not only demonstrate product-market fit but also possess a real product ecosystem and performance delivery.

However, such projects are rare in the crypto industry. So the question arises, are other crypto VCs foolish? Knowing that many so-called AI projects lack a proper product logic, why are they still willing to funnel money into them?

The answer lies in the obvious — crypto VCs are simply seeking liquidity in the words AI. Although they can't join the top project table to share in the chips, the money must be spent. Thus, creating some "AI stand-ins" in the crypto context can also be a viable business. Project parties only need to package themselves as AI, and VCs can shove money in with their eyes closed; as long as both parties can eventually recover their expenses, it's considered a good AI.

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