The past couple of days, the news about @wardenprotocol raising $4 million in a strategic funding round at a $200 million valuation has sparked some discussions among friends. At first glance, $4 million might not seem like much compared to the tens of millions often seen in the AI+Web3 space, but that’s exactly what makes this stand out: 1) This is a “team-up” investment in AI infrastructure within Web3. Warden openly turned down traditional VC funding and instead took money from partners like 0G (DA layer), Messari (data analytics), and VeniceAI (privacy). Especially @0G_labs—there’s been a lot of chatter among friends in Phuket about 0G’s commitment and persistence in the AI+Web3 space. This collaborative approach of builders teaming up to build projects highlights one thing: in today’s market environment, pure capital “blood transfusions” are no longer appealing. Partners who can bring business synergy and “generate blood” are the real value. The logic is simple: mutual investment and binding across the upstream and downstream industry chain create a deeper moat than pure financial investment. 2) Projects in the Agentic AI era are moving from concepts to “cash flow.” This is actually a sign of the AI Agent space maturing. Manus’s jaw-dropping ARR performance has proven the ceiling of this space, making it impossible for Web3 AI projects to rely solely on storytelling and concepts. This time, Warden didn’t raise much, but they did share some numbers: over 60 million agent tasks executed, with an annualized revenue of about $2.5 million. While this is still far from mature Web2 AI, once Web3 agents complete their cold start, combined with transaction preferences and asset management, the data’s explosive growth could exceed expectations. This shows that the commercial closed-loop logic is working, and most importantly, they’ve shown the confidence to back it up with cash flow. That’s it. In any case, the Agentic AI space is definitely the narrative battleground for the next year or two, so don’t be surprised to see more projects jumping in. On the contrary, seeing valuations for these projects come down a bit actually feels more reassuring. What do you think?