The Optic startup, which authenticates NFTs using artificial intelligence (AI) technology, raised $11 million in a seed round of funding. The Block reports.
The round was led by Kleiner Perkins and Pantera Capital. Participants included Greylock Partners, Lattice Capital, OpenSea, Circle, Polygon, CoinDCX, Neon DAO and Flamingo DAO.
Optic will devote the funds to building core AI infrastructure and expanding the team. The project will launch new tools for digital artists and NFT collectors, as well as a public API for Web3 developers.
The company was founded in 2021 by former Google product director Andrey Doronichev, software developers Roman Doronin and Vlad Vinogradov. The startup is developing an AI engine for recognizing NFT content.
Optic says that it processes millions of collectible tokens daily, matching them to determine authenticity. Automated monitoring tools notify marketplaces, brands and NFT owners of the results.
“Optic goes beyond other services we evaluated in terms of responsiveness and matching accuracy, and this is one of the many factors that led us to become their clients,” — заявил OpenSea product director Shiva Rajaraman.
In June, the founder and CEO of the largest NFT marketplace Devin Finzer described the measures OpenSea took to combat fraud and plagiarism. He also announced further investments in additional solutions in this area.
In February, the platform said that more than 80% of NFTs created using the free mint option were counterfeit or spam.
In June, the combined trading volume on NFT marketplaces stood at $1.04 billion, down 74% from the May figure. In this context, OpenSea announced a layoff of 20% of its staff.
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