Crunch Lab raised $3.5 million in seed funding led by the crypto-focused investment firm Multicoin Capital.
Factor Capital, Fabric VC and Elixir Capital also supported the round, bringing the startup's total funding raised to $5.3 million.
Crunch Lab is the core contributor behind CrunchDAO, a platform for AI researchers who can participate in distributed machine learning competitions. In addition to other rewards, CrunchDAO members can earn CRNCH tokens as part of their participation in competitions. CRNCH tokens give holders governance rights in addition to other CrunchDAO perks.
“Crunch Lab has just entered the prototyping phase with two new financial institutions, to provide them live data feeds,” the startup's founder and CEO Jean Herelle told The Block. “This collaboration is expected to lead to $2 million additional ARR for Crunch Lab this year.”
Crunch Lab previously closed its pre-seed round in 2021, which saw support from angel investors with quantitative finance or tech knowledge, Herelle said.
About Author
MK Manoylov has been a reporter for The Block since 2020 — joining just before bitcoin surpassed $20,000 for the first time. Since then, MK has written nearly 1,000 articles for the publication, covering any and all crypto news but with a penchant toward NFT, metaverse, web3 gaming, funding, crime, hack and crypto ecosystem stories. MK holds a graduate degree from New York University's Science, Health and Environmental Reporting Program (SHERP) and has also covered health topics for WebMD and Insider. You can follow MK on X @MManoylov and on LinkedIn.
