Crunch Lab Secures $5 Million to Advance Decentralized AI Network

• Crunch’s crowdsourcing strategy is producing quantifiable results in actual settings; it is not only theoretical.
• A meritocratic and ever-improving system is ensured by the distribution of rewards only based on performance.

In June, VanEck and Multicoin joined Crunch Lab, the primary contributor to CrunchDAO, in raising $5 million in a strategic investment round headed by Road Capital and Galaxy Ventures. After its 2024 seed round of $3.5 million, the total fundraising now stands at $10 million.

For prestigious organizations like the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Research Lab and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Crunch Lab’s decentralized network has already produced double-digit accuracy gains. Through structured modeling challenges called Crunches, businesses can now access CrunchDAO’s network of 10,000+ machine learning engineers and 1,200+ PhDs without having to spend $100M+ to hire top AI talent.

Proven in Production

Crunch’s crowdsourcing strategy is producing quantifiable results in actual settings; it is not only theoretical:

• ADIA Lab: cross-sectional asset price forecasts have improved by 17%.
• Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard: Significant advancements in computer vision-based cancer gene research.
• FX OTC: A multinational investment bank is now using the crowdsourced mid-market pricing engine Mid+One™, which is being deployed live.

“AI today is constrained by hiring bottlenecks, siloed teams and an inability to scale effectively,” said Jean Herelle, CEO of Crunch Lab and CrunchDAO. “We’ve flipped that model. Instead of competing for scarce talent, we give enterprises secure access to all of it through a decentralized network.”

An Advantage of Collective Intelligence

Contributors compete to create the best models as Crunch turns business forecasting issues into encrypted modeling challenges. A meritocratic and ever-improving system is ensured by the distribution of rewards only based on performance.

“This isn’t theoretical hype—it’s proven,” added Herelle. “When thousands of practitioners compete, you uncover solutions even the best internal teams miss.”

This is seen by investors as the subsequent tier of decentralized infrastructure:

“Crunch Lab is building an intelligence layer for global enterprises,” said Will Nuelle, General Partner at Galaxy Ventures. “Whether predicting asset prices, optimizing energy demand, or advancing healthcare diagnostics, CrunchDAO’s crowdsourced models unlock smarter, faster decision-making.”

“We believe Crunch Lab represents one of the most compelling attempts to connect global quants with enterprises at scale,” added Thomas Bailey of Road Capital. “AI is a trillion-dollar market, and open protocols like Crunch are positioned to capture it.”

Expanding Access

Crunch Lab will speed up platform development and enter new markets outside of finance and biological research with this financing. CrunchDAO’s technical methodology and business potential were further validated earlier this year when it was chosen for the second cohort of the Solana Incubator.

Crunch Lab, which brings together top data scientists, ML specialists, and Nobel laureates, is at the forefront of AI research. Its research pushes the boundaries of collective intelligence, giving businesses the ability to use real-time prediction without sacrificing intellectual property or data security.

Through structured Crunches built on Solana, CrunchDAO links more than 10,000 data scientists and AI developers globally, including more than 1,200 PhDs. Across sectors, the protocol allows for the safe crowdsourcing of models that routinely beat conventional in-house teams.