In our view, VC investing in AI applications & agents is a boomer concept in the age of abundance. It only works in a protectionist closed-source regime. For Decentralized AI (DeAI), a new incentive alignment paradigm is needed. Luckily, we are pioneering it.

In our opinionated view, most of the value accrual is already moving to the application layer and the current VC model of treating startups like “Foie gras” doesn’t work anymore. While building AI models is still capital intensive, mostly due to GPU access and acquisition costs (although challenged by likes of DeepSeek), innovating at the application and agentic layer isn’t. Additionally, we hold the view that L1s for AI are narrative plays for pleasing specific audiences and and believe in the modular approaches to build AI where each AI app, model, and agent will have it’s own chain i.e. Appchain thesis.

AI builders should not be forced to give up a share in their AI models, agents, or apps in exchange for equity. Rather, as intelligence becomes a commodity, new capital formation models that offer more transparent and flexible terms will be preferred option for AI innovators to collaborate with their community instead of gatekeepers.

Hence, we’ve designed a new tokenomics model to enable direct revenue-share based collaboration between AI Innovators and LPs enabled through yield bearing entities we call “Pods”.

We are in the final stretch of this effort and will publish the whitepaper around TOKEN 2049 Dubai 2025.

Cheers.