Crunch Lab’s Decentralized AI Network Accelerates Research Progress
The decentralized AI network has made significant contributions to cancer gene therapy research at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.
Crunch Lab, a pivotal player behind CrunchDAO, recently secured $5 million in a strategic funding round aimed at enhancing its decentralized AI predictions network. This funding contributes to its total of $10 million, intended for developing an institutional ‘intelligence layer’ for decentralized AI, as mentioned in a disclosure to Cointelegraph.
Co-led by Galaxy Ventures and Road Capital, with investors like VanEck and Multicoin participating in June, the funding supports Crunch Lab’s initiative to turn enterprise forecasting into ’encrypted modeling competitions’, rewarding those who generate the most effective predictive models.
“When thousands of practitioners compete, you uncover solutions even the best internal teams miss,” Jean Herelle, co-founder and CEO of Crunch Lab, explained. He emphasized that instead of vying for a limited talent pool, enterprises will have secure access to a decentralized network.
Funding to Facilitate Decentralized AI Innovation
Crunch Lab’s innovative approach utilizes blockchain incentives to decentralize AI development by allowing data scientists to compete anonymously while maintaining data privacy. This new network could potentially act as an ‘intelligence layer for global enterprises’, according to Will Nuelle, general partner at Galaxy.
“Whether predicting asset prices, optimizing energy consumption, or enhancing healthcare diagnostics, CrunchDAO’s models facilitate more intelligent, quicker decision-making,” he added. The network is also set to expand its reach into real-world sectors beyond finance and biomedical research.
Crunch Lab’s AI Delivers Tangible Breakthroughs
Crunch Lab’s crowdsourced AI technology already yields impressive outcomes for major global institutions, including the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which successfully implemented it for cancer gene research therapy through computer vision techniques.
“The network is actively used in actual research,” stated Herelle. The Eric and Wendy Schmidt Center deployed it to improve computer vision models for cancer detection via cell images.
Notably, Nobel laureate Guido Imbens utilized Crunch Lab’s platform to develop one of the pioneering algorithms capable of revealing causal links between economic factors.
Additionally, Crunch Lab has produced ‘double-digit accuracy improvements’ for the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Research Lab, which is part of a sovereign wealth fund managing over $1 trillion.
CrunchDAO was also chosen for the Solana Incubator’s second cohort in early 2025, which aims to foster projects enhancing Solana’s mainstream application.
