Nasdaq-listed OceanPal Inc. has raised $120 million by means of a personal funding in public fairness deal to launch SovereignAI, a brand new subsidiary centered on commercializing the NEAR Protocol and creating AI infrastructure.
In response to a Tuesday announcement, SovereignAI will implement a crypto treasury technique, with plans to amass as much as 10% of the NEAR (NEAR) token provide. The transfer, developed in partnership with the NEAR Basis, makes OceanPal a public car for publicity to the crypto protocol’s native token.
OceapPal mentioned the partnership with the NEAR Basis is predicated on a shared imaginative and prescient of “common AI sovereignty.”
Launched in 2020, NEAR is a layer-1 blockchain supporting AI functions, permitting AI brokers to work together, handle belongings and function securely throughout networks, according to the challenge’s web site.
The announcement coincides with a management shift at OceanPal, which appointed former State Road govt Sal Ternullo as co-CEO and David Schwed, beforehand with BNY Mellon, Galaxy and Robinhood, as chief working officer.
In the meantime, NEAR Basis co-founder and CEO Illia Polosukhin will be part of the SovereignAI advisory board alongside Richard Muirhead of Cloth Ventures and Lukasz Kaiser of OpenAI, amongst others.
Associated: OpenAI restructures as public benefit corporation, Microsoft secures 27% stake
The rise of AI brokers in crypto
AI brokers — autonomous systems that can perceive, determine and act with out human enter — are more and more merging with crypto, utilizing blockchain networks to handle belongings, confirm actions and function as self-governing financial contributors.
In September, John D’Agostino, the pinnacle of institutional technique at Coinbase, told CNBC’s Squawk Field that cryptocurrency is needed for AI agents to function successfully in monetary markets.
The identical month, Cloudflare, a world cloud infrastructure firm, introduced plans to launch a new stablecoin called NET Dollar to assist immediate transactions triggered by AI brokers.
Current data from Dune Analytics revealed that Coinbase’s AI-ready funds protocol, launched in Could to let autonomous agents send and receive stablecoins on-line, had seen transaction exercise surge over 10,000% up to now month.
These numbers got here after two Coinbase builders mentioned in August that AI brokers are “about to turn into Ethereum’s biggest power users.”
Journal: You should ‘go and build’ your own AI agent: Jesse Pollak, X Hall of Flame
