Participated · Seed · Jul 2026

Sentient develops a decentralized AI infrastructure called GRID that connects more than 100 models, data sources and reasoning agents to enable compositional multi-model responses. Built products include Dobby (a family of open-source LLMs tuned for community-aligned values), Sentient Chat (an agent-aggregation interface) and Open Deep Search, which the team says outperformed closed alternatives on the FRAMES benchmark. The project issues the SENT token for staking, governance, service payments and contributor rewards to coordinate a distributed community of developers, data providers and infrastructure operators. Sentient was founded in January 2024 by Sandeep Nailwal, Pramod Viswanath and Himanshu Tyagi and has secured an $85M seed round plus a $42M grants/investment program for open AGI research, bringing total committed capital above $125M. The team emphasizes keeping advanced models and agents openly available and auditable rather than proprietary. Following a listing of SENT on a major exchange, the token jumped about 20% on July 9, 2026, an event the coverage characterizes as liquidity-driven and highlights execution and adoption risk as key determinants of long-term value.

Participated · Seed · Oct 2025

Mesta operates a hybrid fiat + stablecoin payment network designed to eliminate the traditional trade-off between speed and cost in cross-border transactions. Its platform supports USD, EUR, GBP, USDC, USDT, USDG, PYUSD and 40+ local currencies, converting them via native local rails that do not require pre-funded pools. Enterprises use Mesta for bill payments, payroll, supply-chain disbursements and same-name on/off-ramps, achieving settlement in minutes and fee reductions of more than 50%. Since launching in 2024, the company has processed over $140 million in total payment volume and now averages about $3 million in daily volume, with a projection to exceed $300 million TPV by year-end. Founded by former Uber, PayPal and BILL executive Sandeep Pyapali, the San-Francisco-based startup combines regulated fiat corridors with blockchain efficiency. The newly raised capital will be applied to expanding product features, growing international teams and accelerating worldwide adoption of its network.

Participated · Equity · Mar 2025

Rain delivers a full-stack, compliant payments platform that lets enterprises issue stablecoin cards, offer rewards, convert fiat to stablecoins, power wallets and execute global payouts through a single partner. As a Visa Principal Member, its cards work anywhere Visa is accepted, supporting millions of purchases in more than 150 countries. The network already moves more than $3 billion in annualized transaction volume for over 200 partners such as Western Union, Nuvei and KAST, and the programs built on Rain can reach over 2.5 billion people. During the past year the company’s active card base expanded 30× and its annualized payment volume climbed 38×, signaling fast market adoption. Total funding now exceeds $338 million and the latest round pegs the company’s valuation at $1.95 billion, a 17× increase in ten months. Looking ahead, Rain intends to extend its licensed footprint across North America, South America, Europe, Asia and Africa, deepen its platform through strategic acquisitions, and develop new products that make stablecoin payments seamless for businesses and consumers.

Participated · Equity · Aug 2024

Sahara AI offers a decentralized blockchain platform designed to ensure security, equity, accessibility, and provenance for AI development and deployment. The platform is built to support open and equitable AI, with features that prioritize sovereignty and provenance of AI models and data. The company is used by 35+ tech innovators and research institutions, including Microsoft, Amazon, MIT, Motherson Group, and Snap. Sahara AI has partnered with strategic angels and advisors from industry and academia, such as Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, Rohan Taori, Teknium, Vipul Prakash, and Elvis Zhang. The company intends to use new funding to expand its global team, enhance the performance of its AI blockchain, and grow its developer ecosystem. Sahara AI is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. Sahara operates a decentralized AI network built around personalized Knowledge Agents that let businesses and individuals monetize proprietary data and expertise while preserving privacy. The company also offers Sahara Data, a data infrastructure service providing data annotation and AI model training services that has attracted interest from more than 30 enterprise clients, including Fortune 500 companies and unicorn startups. Sahara describes a Collaborative Economy model that rewards knowledge developers, providers, compute providers, execution node operators, validators, and knowledge consumers for their contributions. The team announced coming out of stealth on March 5, 2024 and reported rapid community demand: more than 50,000 people joined the waitlist within five days. Founders Sean Ren and Tyler Zhou have discussed the product and web3 architecture in interviews with Coindesk, emphasizing transparent tracking of contributions and rewards via blockchain. The company is actively building community engagement on Discord, Twitter, and LinkedIn as it develops Sahara Knowledge Agents and expands Sahara Data enterprise traction.

Participated · Equity · Jun 2024

Nuffle Labs is a newly formed spinout created by the NEAR Foundation to push NEAR modularity and decentralize development in the ecosystem. The company will build and offer rollups using NEAR’s Data Availability (NESR DA) and Fast Finally Layer (NFFL) products. As an independent entity, Nuffle Labs is intended to make agile decisions to keep NEAR Modular products competitive. The spinout is positioned to leverage strengths across the NEAR Foundation, Ethereum, and EigenLayer ecosystems to enhance efficiency and resilience. The formation was accompanied by a $13 million fundraise to support its launch and operations. The funding structure included a grant from the NEAR Foundation alongside external investment to back the new organization.