Giza, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform for smart contracts and web3 protocols, today announced a $3 million pre-seed round led by CoinFund, a leading cryptonative investment firm and registered investment adviser, with participation from Arrington Capital, StarkWare and TA Ventures, along with prominent angels like Rand Hindi and Julien Bouteloup, among others. Funding will go towards the launch of Giza's platform, which will support web3 and AI developers to integrate machine learning into smart contracts and decentralized protocols.

Current web3 infrastructure, such as smart contracts, are fundamentally static and disconnected from real-world context, exposing web3 users to various inefficiencies, UX hurdles and vulnerabilities. By providing trustless inference access to web3 applications, ML models served on Giza’s platform will provide smart contracts with the ability to classify, contextualize and adapt.

“Smart contracts are not as smart as their name would suggest,” said Francisco Algaba, CEO of Giza. “They lack the capabilities and ease of use of many web2 applications because, until now, smart contracts cannot trustlessly integrate machine learning. Giza is on a mission to unlock the capabilities of machine learning for web3 smart contracts and protocols leveraging collective and open development. Successful integration of AI into web3 will not only expand the capabilities of smart contracts but will also enable the possibility of new models of ownership for AI.”

Currently, smart contracts can’t trustlessly operate on off-chain data without relying on oracles, reducing their ability to leverage machine learning. Giza changes this by using zero-knowledge cryptography to bring model inferencing on-chain, unlocking a new depth for smart contract design.

This new design space has significant implications across web3 verticals. ML-integrated smart contracts will perform significantly better for usability in web3 with use cases such as biometric access and account recovery; in DeFi, protocols can enhance their risk assessment mechanisms, leading to a more resilient open finance infrastructure. Giza can also shift the paradigm in web3 gaming with on-chain autonomous agents, difficulty adjustment and asset interoperability mechanisms.

“We are thrilled to support Giza’s efforts to be one of the first projects that make AI models available to smart contracts and dramatically expand their design space” said Einar Braathen, Investor, CoinFund. “Fran, Cem, and Renç are an exceptional and truly web3 native team, with what we consider a unique blend of AI, web3 and operational experience. This shines through in their incredible vision and their lightning fast execution and time to market.”