KIP Protocol said it has closed a $5 million private funding round co-led by Animoca Ventures and Tribe Capital. Other investors named in the round include GBV Capital, DWF Ventures, Morningstar Ventures, Kyros Ventures, K300 Ventures, New Tribe Capital, ZBS Capital, Purechain Capital, and Fomocraft Ventures. With the new raise, the company said its total funding has now reached $10 million.
Building Web3 rails for AI deployment and monetization
KIP positions itself as a Web3 base layer for AI, targeting developers, model creators, and data owners that need infrastructure for deployment, connectivity, and monetization. The project says its main focus is on creating payment rails and data rails that allow AI builders to generate sustainable business models around their AI assets while keeping full ownership rights.
The company also highlighted its technical roots in decentralized retrieval-augmented generation, or D/RAG. KIP was a winner of the 2023 Chainlink Hackathon, and says that expertise now underpins its framework for helping AI asset holders deploy and monetize products in decentralized environments. It has also listed partnerships with Open Campus, Aethir, Google Cloud, Moemate, and OKX Wallet.
Capital aimed at decentralized AI growth
According to the announcement, the fresh capital will be used to advance decentralized AI development through more secure and robust AI solutions. KIP also linked the financing to the recent passage of OCP-12, under which it is set to launch and manage Open Campus U, a development the company described as another step toward reducing monopolistic barriers in the AI industry.
KIP said its partnership with Moemate is expected to onboard more than 3 million AI users into Web3 through the protocol. In parallel, the OCP-12 proposal also led to the approval of a $10 million fund to build Open Campus U, a DeAI learning platform designed to use KIP’s D/RAG solution to deliver personalized educational experiences.
Node sale and token incentives
The project is also running a node sale to support the compute resources and security needed for its DeAI ecosystem. KIP said rewards will accrue from 20% of the total $KIP supply over a period of three years. The company argues that these nodes will form core infrastructure for real-world AI applications built on the network.
This announcement was released as a press statement by the project. Readers and market participants should independently verify funding, partnership, and adoption claims and assess execution and investment risks with appropriate caution.