Kaito Secures $5.5 Million in Series A Funding to Develop AI-Powered Crypto Search Engine

Kaito Secures $5.5 Million in Series A Funding to Develop AI-Powered Crypto Search Engine

Kaito, a startup focused on the crypto industry, has successfully raised $5.5 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at $87.5 million. The funding will be used to build an advanced artificial intelligence (AI) search engine specifically tailored to the needs of the crypto sector, as revealed by Kaito to CoinDesk.

AI technology is increasingly being embraced by crypto firms, either as a means to supplement their revenue streams or to enhance their products and features. Following a period of regulatory crackdown and a downturn in public sentiment towards digital assets, AI is now emerging as the new favorite in the technology landscape.

The beta version of Kaito’s search engine was launched on June 20 to an initial user base of 35,000 individuals who had been on the waitlist. This innovative platform combines large language models (LLMs) with real-time access to a wide range of data sources, including Twitter, Discord, Telegram, governance forums, Medium, Mirror, industry research, news articles, Kaito’s proprietary Twitter Space and podcast transcripts, as well as on-chain data. Yu Hu, the founder and CEO of Kaito, explained that existing plugins, such as ChatGPT, do not adequately connect with off-chain crypto-specific information silos or on-chain data, thus failing to fully meet the requirements of individuals in the crypto space.

LLMs, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, are artificial neural networks trained on extensive language datasets. Their capabilities enable them to comprehend and generate human-like texts. Due to their language proficiency, LLMs possess the ability to grasp complex concepts and explain them to users in an accessible manner.

The latest funding round was led by early-stage crypto venture capital firms, Superscrypt and Spartan. This follows a previous raise of $5.3 million in funding, led by tech venture capital firm Dragonfly, which included participation from Sequoia Capital China and Jane Street in February.

CoinDesk had the opportunity to test Kaito’s search prompts and inquire about the most significant topic in the industry at present: the impact of an exchange-traded fund (ETF) launch by a subsidiary of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, on Bitcoin. In response, the chatbot provided ten news articles on the subject and generated a nuanced answer. According to Kaito AI, “The potential approval of BlackRock’s Bitcoin ETF could have a positive impact on the crypto market, as it would make investing in BTC easier for institutional investors and increase institutional adoption.”