Surf, an AI platform specializing in digital asset analysis, has secured $15 million in funding led by Pantera Capital, along with contributions from Coinbase Ventures and DCG, aimed at enhancing its AI models and enterprise solutions.
The platform provides a domain-specific model that supports exchanges and research firms in analyzing on-chain activity, market trends, and sentiment. The investment will facilitate Surf 2.0, which aims to roll out more sophisticated models, expanded proprietary datasets, and additional agents to manage complex analytical tasks.
Surf reported that its platform has experienced rapid adoption since its launch in July, producing over one million research reports and generating millions in annual recurring revenue, with significant usage from major exchanges and research agencies.
Surf’s model employs a multi-agent architecture that analyzes on-chain data, social sentiment, and token activity, delivering insights via a chat interface, thereby reducing the manual workload for analysts and traders.
Related: How to turn ChatGPT into your personal crypto trading assistant
The ongoing synergy between AI and digital assets
Artificial intelligence and blockchain are increasingly converging as more companies create tools that utilize both technologies.
In April, decentralized AI startup Nous Research completed a $50 million Series A funding round led by Paradigm. They are developing open-source AI models supported by decentralized infrastructure, using the Solana blockchain to facilitate and incentivize global participant involvement in training.
In May, Catena Labs, co-founded by Sean Neville of Circle, announced it raised $18 million to build a bank centered around native AI infrastructure. The system is designed for both AI agents and human contributors, with AI managing daily operations under human oversight.
In October, Coinbase launched “Based Agent,” a tool allowing users to create an AI agent with an integrated crypto wallet in mere minutes, enabling on-chain actions such as trading, swapping, and staking.
As the intersection of crypto and AI evolves, the role of human traders may also be changing. The decentralized exchange Aster is hosting a “human vs AI” trading competition, funding up to 100 human traders with $10,000 each to compete against high-performing AI agents from Dec. 9–23.
Although the competition still has 13 days remaining, Team Human was in the lead as of Wednesday, with a return on investment (ROI) of 13.36%, compared to Team AI’s ROI of 0.54%.
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