Quick take:
- The company will use the funds to accelerate the development of its platform, which helps gamers monetize their data
- Carv, which was last valued at $40 million in a seed round announced in 2022 did not disclose its current valuation in the latest round.
- The company’s modular data layer will initially focus on gaming and AI before extending support to other verticals.
Carv, a modular data layer for gaming and AI has closed a $10 million Series A round led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures. The fundraising also attracted participation from Arweave, Consensys, Draper Dragon, Fenbushi Capital, LiquidX, No Limit Holdings, OKX Ventures and the Korean gaming company Netmarble’s Web3 arm — MARBLEX.
Although Carv did not disclose its current valuation, the company was previously valued at $40 million in a $4 million seed round announced in 2022.
The company said it will use the fresh capital to enhance the design of its CARV Protocol to ensure it is scalable and can support a broader range of use cases. Carv’s platform will initially focus on gaming and AI before expanding to more use cases, the company said in an announcement on Thursday.
The company is developing three products, CARV Protocol — a modular layer that connects web2 identities with tokens on-chain, CARV Play — which is a cross-chain credentialing system and game distribution platform, and CARA — an AI agent that integrates with web3 wallets to provide guidance and assistance to gamers including recommending games, activities and projects.
Carv’s focus on gaming and AI is strategically poised as more game developers continue to integrate artificial intelligence at the intersection of blockchain gaming and AI. The company is addressing an emergent area of concern in the AI gaming sector as data privacy takes centre stage.
“Carv differentiates itself by putting data ownership and monetization rights in the hands of users. Any revenue generated from leveraging users’ data gets shared back with the data creators and themselves,” Victor Yu, co-founder and COO of Carv told TechCrunch.
“We’ve created a unified user ID standard (ERC-7231) that bridges web2 and web3, enabling seamless data portability versus today’s siloed solutions,” Yu added.
According to Yu, his company has been profitable since January 2023, generating a monthly recurring revenue of $1 million.
Carv says its platform allows users to provide their data to its corporate customers in a way that preserves their privacy and is compliant with regulations. Companies can then use the data to train AI models and do market research among other use cases, the company said.
Carv now boasts 2.5 million registered users and over 350 integrated gaming and AI company partners. The company plans to launch CARV link — an on-chain identity and data authentication product, and CARV database — a data management system.
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