AI and Blockchain Intersect
Weekly Recap
Funding jumped $71 million from last week’s lackluster $30 million to total $101 million for the week. The deal count increased to 17, with 13 deals focused on seed-stage companies. Infrastructure remains the most popular category, although investors seem to be honing in on blockchain applications outside digital assets. The second largest deal of the week, Ingonyama, raised $20 million to develop next-generation semiconductors that leverage cryptography. Ritual, our deal of the week, raised a leading $25 million to design a decentralized AI compute network, aiming to compete with the likes of Anthropic and Google. The applications of blockchains outside of digital assets have had relatively little traction aside from a few projects, with most start-ups looking to capitalize on opportunities focused on existing crypto users, who primarily use investing-based applications. We will closely monitor whether this becomes a new investing trend, as the convergence of AI and Blockchain could become a whole new category of infrastructure that targets blue ocean opportunities.