Pond, a crypto startup developing a decentralized AI model layer, has secured $7.5 million in seed funding led by Archetype, with participation from Cyber Fund, Delphi Ventures, Coinbase Ventures, and Near Foundation. Angel investors included notable names such as Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of Near Protocol; Chris Yin, co-founder and CEO of Plume Network; Cynthia Wu of Matrixport; and Tesa Ho from Flashbots.
Founded in 2023, Pond initially launched with a search engine leveraging on-chain data, allowing users to explore blockchain connections through a proprietary graph algorithm. Recognizing the potential for broader applications, Pond expanded to build AI models specifically for crypto use cases. Co-founder and CTO Bill Shi described their mission as creating a “complete model ecosystem” for data processing, model computation, training, and inference.
Pond’s models focus on transforming vast and complex on-chain data into actionable insights for crypto-specific applications. Current offerings include security-focused models for predicting malicious addresses, NFT and DeFi recommendations, and a dynamic fee model for liquidity providers in DeFi.
With 11 employees, Pond plans to expand its applications to areas such as DeFi risk management and insider trading detection and is actively hiring for key positions, including COO and product manager.
