- IOSG Ventures, Geometry, a16z CSX, and others have contributed $5 million to OpenLayer’s fundraising efforts.
- The business, co-founded by three former Robinhood workers, has developed an AI data layer.
Three former Robinhood employees co-founded the crypto-AI startup OpenLayer, which has raised $5 million in its first round of funding.
Undisclosed angel investors from cryptocurrency projects including EigenLayer, AltLayer, Puffer Finance, and Sei Network are among the investors, along with a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX), Geometry, IOSG Ventures, Spartan Group, and LongHash Ventures. OpenLayer co-founder Yuchen Jiang said.
According to Jiang, the fundraising campaign started in June and ended in August. He stated that the transaction was set up as a simple agreement for future equity (SAFE).
Former Robinhood tech lead and senior software engineer Jiang co-founded OpenLayer in 2023 with former Robinhood employees Chen Chen, a former engineering manager, and Kevin Yin, a former senior product manager. Jiang claimed that the team was motivated to create OpenLayer by their experience at Robinhood, which brought to light the difficulties in obtaining data because of the strict control that IT giants exercised.
Even if blockchain technology is upending on-chain data silos, important data is still obscured and difficult to access behind web2 websites’ walled gardens. For instance, without access to users’ historical history on established platforms, new social media platforms find it difficult to compete and bootstrap their user experience. AI agents are unable to provide genuinely tailored services because they lack thorough understanding of users’ habits.
The operation of OpenLayer
OpenLayer is an AI data layer that allows people to earn points by validating and contributing data through a Chrome plugin. According to its website, application developers can access this user data with permission from the user, protecting privacy. Use cases include improved features, user targeting, and AI model training.
Web proofs of user data from several websites are accessible through OpenLayer’s developer platform. Without requiring authorization from the original data source, developers can utilize these proofs to verify that a user, for instance, has finished 20 tasks on Fiverr or made over $100,000 in trading gains on a centralized exchange.
OpenLayer began as an Ethereum restaking protocol’s actively verified service (AVS) on EigenLayer. EigenLayer enables developers to establish their own networks or AVSs by utilizing Ethereum’s economic security infrastructure, which includes staked ether and validator sets. OpenLayer AVS is one of the biggest AVSs on EigenLayer, with over 48,575 restakers and a restaked value of 3.38 million ether (more than $10 billion), according to an EigenLayer dashboard.
EigenLayer is a decentralized security marketplace with two sides. Since there are currently more supply-side restakers than demand-side AVSs, each AVS can easily obtain a large amount of restaked ETH.
According to Jiang, OpenLayer is being used by more than a dozen businesses in the social networking, gaming, and artificial intelligence domains to access and exploit authenticated user data. He noted that OpenLayer charges fees for data access, but he would not say how much.
OpenLayer, a U.S.-based company, currently employs seven individuals and wants to add two more engineers.
Disclaimer : This article was created for informational purposes only and should not be taken as investment advice. An asset’s past performance does not predict its future returns. Before making an investment, please conduct your own research, as digital assets like cryptocurrencies are highly risky and volatile financial instruments.
