Grass raises $3.5m as Polychain Capital and others bet on decentralized AI

Startup for passive income, Grass, has raised 3.5 million in seed funding to become a decentralized oracle for artificial intelligence (AI).

Wynd Network, the developers behind the Grass project, have announced the successful closure of a $3.5 million seed funding round co-led by Polychain Capital and Tribe Capital. In a blog post on Dec. 19, Wynd Network said the latest infusion of capital brought the firm’s total funding to $4.5 million, following a pre-seed round led by No Limit Holdings.

The founders of Grass believe that a decentralized model offers significant advantages for web scraping. Describing Grass as a decentralized oracle for AI, the founders emphasize that the platform will generate datasets traceable to their origin, enabling fair compensation for contributors to the network.

“As a decentralized oracle for AI, Grass will produce datasets that can be traced back to their origin, making it possible to compensate people fairly for their contribution to the network.”

Wynd Network

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Other investors such as Bitscale, Big Brain, Advisors Anonymous, Typhon V, and Mozaik have also participated in the funding round. With the proceeds, Wynd Network plans to expand its network of nodes and continue the firm’s growth in the landscape of decentralized web scraping networks.

Launched in June, Grass is the brainchild of Wynd Network, which is focused on transforming public web data into valuable AI datasets. The network’s vision revolves around mobilizing home internet connections to engage in the scraping and verification of data from the web.

The funding arrives just a few weeks after analysts at a16z published a 2024 prediction report highlighting use cases for distributed ledger technology in conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI). Andrew Hall, a professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, emphasized that blockchain networks can function as a “counterbalancing force to centralized AI,” further stating that crypto has the potential to foster “multi-sided, global, permissionless markets where anyone can contribute.”

In the realm of cryptocurrencies, tokens related to artificial intelligence are experiencing increased popularity, contributing to a total market cap of $9.03 billion for AI tokens, as per data from CoinGecko.

For instance, Fetch.ai, a platform designed for the creation of autonomous economic agents capable of independently executing tasks, observed a remarkable surge in its native token FET, surpassing 25% growth in the past week, reaching $0.72. Simultaneously, Arkham Intelligence, a platform powered by AI for data analytics, witnessed its token ARKM appreciating by over 40%, elevating its price to $0.65.

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