The AI platform Surf, designed for the cryptocurrency industry, announced today that it has secured $15 million in funding from Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures to accelerate the launch of the next-generation model Surf 2.0. Given the high error rates of general-purpose AI in the cryptocurrency field, the market is experiencing a new wave of innovative integration of AI and blockchain research and trading.
Breaking the AI Illusion: Surf Becomes the 'Most Understanding AI Brain in Cryptocurrency'
Surf founder Ryan Li revealed in an interview with Fortune magazine that his motivation for founding Surf came from observing the phenomenon of mainstream AIs like ChatGPT or Perplexity repeatedly experiencing hallucinations in the cryptocurrency field, pointing out that misinformation could lead to significant losses for traders.
Surf thus stands on a foundation of crypto-native models, capable of answering questions from basic knowledge, on-chain data to technical analysis. Currently, the platform has accumulated over 300,000 users and generated over 1 million research reports, of which 20% are from exchanges, research institutions, and venture capital firms.
General v.s. Crypto-native AI? Surf: Performance surpasses ChatGPT by four times
Ryan pointed out competitors such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok, stating that in the benchmark tests co-authored with Princeton University, the Surf model outperformed ChatGPT and Grok by four times on crypto tasks:
ChatGPT is a generalist, but its understanding of cryptocurrencies is not deep enough, while Surf is like an expert who has worked in the crypto industry for decades.
Currently, the platform operates on a subscription model, with monthly fees ranging from $15 to $399, generating millions of dollars in revenue, and is expected to reach $10 million by the end of 2026.
Surf 2.0 will debut in February next year: proprietary database and enterprise-level AI Agents
Today, Surf secured $15 million in funding from Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and DCG, with the team stating that the funds will be used to develop Surf 2.0, expected to launch in February 2026.
The new version will include a larger amount of on-chain proprietary data, enhance the multi-agent architecture, and introduce automation tools for executing multi-step research tasks to assist exchanges, research institutions, and funds in reducing analysis costs.
AI combined with cryptocurrencies: from decentralized AI to the trading competition craze
The rise of Surf also reflects the rapid intersection of artificial intelligence and the crypto industry.
In April this year, decentralized AI startup Nous Research completed a $50 million Series A funding led by Paradigm, aiming to build decentralized AI infrastructure on Solana. Six months later, Coinbase also launched the AI agent tool 'Based Agent' capable of autonomously executing on-chain operations.
Recently, multiple trading competitions featuring 'different brands of AI' or 'humans vs AI' have been held, revealing that AI is accelerating the research and trading processes of individuals in the crypto market.
(Can AI really replace human traders? Live competition data: humans currently have the upper hand, with performance volatility differing by 20 times)
This article discusses Surf securing $15 million in funding from Pantera and Coinbase, creating native AI in the crypto field, first appearing in Chain News ABMedia.
