YZi Labs Invests in Crypto AI Firm Vana, CZ Joins as Advisor
YZi Labs, formerly Binance Labs, has officially invested in Vana – a crypto AI startup focused on data ownership. In addition, Binance co-founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao also joined as an advisor to the project.
YZi Labs' Strategic Investment
YZi Labs announced the investment in Vana without disclosing the specific value. According to Anna Kazlauskas, co-founder of Vana, this is a strategic investment that will be completed in January 2025. Notably, YZi Labs is the only investor in this round of funding, with no participation from other investment funds.
Vana just launched its mainnet and token in December 2024. Currently, the VANA token is trading around $6.25, down more than 82% from its initial price. VANA's market cap is around $192 million, while its fully diluted valuation is $747 million.
Prior to receiving investment from YZi Labs, Vana successfully raised $25 million from major funds such as Paradigm, Coinbase Ventures, and Polychain Capital.
Vana and the vision of data ownership
Vana is a San Francisco-based crypto AI startup, founded in 2021 by Anna Kazlauskas and Arthur "Art" Abal. The company focuses on combining AI with data ownership, allowing users to control and monetize their personal data through the Data DAO model.
According to Kazlauskas, the Data DAO is at the core of Vana’s vision of user-owned AI. Through a layer-1 blockchain, Vana enables users to aggregate their data into a Data DAO, which can then earn rewards and maintain control of the data. These entities aggregate data across specific sectors, allowing organizations to use it to train AI while ensuring the rights of data contributors.
With the new funding from YZi Labs, Vana aims to expand the Data DAO ecosystem, launch data tokens for more than 16 Data DAOs, attract more contributors, and expand the data monetization model to sectors such as finance, social media, healthcare, and mobility.
YZi Labs’ AI Strategy
This is YZi Labs’ first AI investment since the company rebranded. The company has previously invested in several crypto AI projects such as Sahara AI and MyShell.
According to a YZi Labs spokesperson, the company is expanding its investment focus beyond Web3 to AI and biotech. They are looking for potential projects at the intersection of these areas and are open to investing in independent AI and biotech projects to capitalize on innovation.
In addition to his advisory role for Vana, CZ is also actively supporting many other YZi Labs portfolio projects. He is reportedly advising potential startups and is open to working with founders at an early stage.
With CZ’s involvement and the investment from YZi Labs, Vana could become one of the pioneering crypto AI projects, promoting data ownership and AI applications on a global scale.
