Crunch Lab, a key player behind CrunchDAO, has secured $5 million in a strategic funding round aimed at enhancing its decentralized artificial intelligence predictions network, which has been instrumental in advancing cancer research at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
This latest funding boosts the protocol’s total investment to $10 million, allocated toward creating an institutional “intelligence layer” for decentralized AI, as announced by the company on Tuesday, in a release shared with Cointelegraph.
The funding round was co-led by Galaxy Ventures and Road Capital, with contributions from VanEck and Multicoin, finalized in June.
Crunch Lab envisions transforming enterprise forecasting challenges into “encrypted modeling competitions,” incentivizing participants to develop the most accurate predictive models.
“When numerous practitioners compete, we uncover solutions that even the best internal teams may overlook,” stated Jean Herelle, co-founder and CEO of Crunch Lab, in an interview with Cointelegraph. “Instead of vying for limited talent, we provide enterprises secure access to a vast pool via a decentralized network.”
Funding to drive decentralized AI innovation
Crunch Lab’s strategy employs blockchain-based incentives to “decentralize” the AI intelligence creation process, allowing data scientists to compete anonymously while maintaining data privacy.
The new decentralized AI network is poised to serve as an “intelligence layer for global enterprises,” remarks Will Nuelle, general partner at Galaxy.
“Whether it’s predicting asset prices, optimizing energy demands, or advancing healthcare diagnostics, CrunchDAO’s crowdsourced models enable smarter and faster decision-making,” he noted.
The network intends to utilize the funding to branch out into real-world industries beyond finance and biomedical research.
Related: Stablecoin market boom to $300B is ‘rocket fuel’ for crypto rally
Crunch Lab’s AI drives real-world breakthroughs
Crunch Labs’ crowdsourced AI solution is already yielding impressive results for top global institutions, including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which has achieved pivotal outcomes in cancer gene research therapy through its computer vision technology.
“Crunch’s network is being actively utilized in genuine research,” stated Herelle. “The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center employed it to develop better computer vision models for cancer detection from cell images.”
Herelle further noted that Nobel Prize-winning economist Guido Imbens has leveraged Crunch Lab’s platform to create one of the first algorithms capable of identifying causal relationships between economic factors.
Related: Crypto trader turns $3K into $2M after CZ post sends memecoin soaring
It has also produced “double-digit accuracy improvements” for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Research Lab, which represents the research division of one of the world’s largest sovereign wealth funds, overseeing over $1 trillion.
CrunchDAO has been selected for the second cohort of the Solana Incubator in early 2025, designed to assist projects that foster the mainstream adoption of the Solana network.
Magazine: Everybody hates GPT-5, AI shows social media can’t be fixed
