Insider Brief
- Nectar AI raised $3.9 million in seed funding to advance its immersive AI companionship platform, co-led by Mechanism Capital and Karatage.
- Funding will be used to scale the team, focusing on key hires in AI and protocol, and to expand partnerships and affiliates.
- Notable investors include Arthur Hayes (Maelstrom), Tekin Salimi, and several key figures in the crypto space.
PRESS RELEASE — NEW YORK/TheNewswire/August 1, 2024 — Nectar AI, an immersive AI companionship platform, announced today it has raised $3.9 million in funding.
The seed round is co-led by Mechanism Capital and Karatage, with participation from Synergis, Maelstrom (Arthur Hayes), Builder Capital, Baboon, and Decima. Notable angel investors include Tekin Salimi and George Lambeth (Dao5), Albert Chon (Cofounder at Injective), Charles Lu (Cofounder at Espresso Systems), Gabby Dizon (Cofounder at YGG), and several other key figures in the crypto space.
The proceeds will be used to scale the team with several key hires on both the AI and protocol side, as well as increase capacity for new partnerships and affiliates.
Nectar AI’s mission is to allow users to create and interact with AI companions that feel indistinguishable from reality. Leveraging the latest developments in generative AI and web3, Nectar AI allows users to create uncensored & replicable multimodal AI companions in either a realistic or anime style. Users can customize their characters at a level of depth unmatched by other platforms, by detecting user intent and responding appropriately with images or text within seconds. Generative AI video creation is also available on the platform, with more in depth video and voice messages coming soon. In the future, users will be able to port their created companions onchain, giving them full IP ownership of their assets as well as the ability to permissionlessly monetize them.
Currently, over 500,000 users on the platform create both AI stories and companions, which allows storytellers to create rich and dynamic role playing experiences that can range from medieval adventures to different encounters. Companions are AI generated agents that can star in any of these stories, similar to casting an actress for a movie.
Members of the Nectar community have lauded the platform for its ability to make uncensored immersive content for entertainment and emotional support.
One user said, “A recent update allowed me to transform my photos into companions. Being able to bring portraits to life inspired me to make a music video with her as the protagonist. Nectar is a very creator-friendly platform, and I’m very much looking forward to the monetization aspect.”
Keccak and Zi, the co-founders of Nectar AI, first met at Stanford and began working on the project in August 2023. Prior, Keccak helped start a prominent AI & crypto fund and Zi made significant contributions to realistic synthetic facial generation at Meta and L1 Blockchains. Nectar is set on developing a new protocol set to release later this year to enable financialization of on-chain AI agents.
About Nectar
Nectar AI is building out the future of human and AI interaction. We believe that these experiences should be uncensored and immersive, and our flagship product allows users to create personalized and multimodal AI companions.
With over 500k users, Nectar AI’s mission is to become the most powerful decentralized platform for creating AI assets, and to deliver an integrated experience both on and offchain. Nectar AI was founded in 2023 by Keccak and Zi, who both graduated from Stanford, and has founding team members from top companies and protocols.
