Summary
- Origins Network has raised $8 million in strategic funding to build a modular blockchain designed for AI agents with verifiable computing.
- The round includes Animoca Brands and other Web3 investors, and the project features a “Proof of Compute” design that separates heavy AI workloads from on-chain verification.
- Origins is already working with AWS, Tencent Cloud and Alibaba Cloud, positioning itself at the intersection of crypto infrastructure and the rapidly growing agent AI stack.
Origins Network has secured $8 million in strategic funding to build a modular blockchain designed specifically for AI agents, betting that verifiable computing will be the missing layer of trust for the next wave of autonomous systems. The round, announced on March 23, 2026, features Animoca Brands along with TBV, Candaq, Castrum Istanbul and Coinvestor Ventures, and the team describes the cap table as a combination of Web3, AI and cloud-native sponsors.
In a statement, Origins said it wants to make AI “auditable, not mystical,” arguing that users should be able to verify how an AI agent arrived at a result rather than accepting black-box results. To do that, the network introduces Proof of Computing (PoC), a design in which large AI inference is executed off-chain on a GPU-rich infrastructure, while succinct proofs of that work are verified and resolved on-chain. “We are not trying to turn a blockchain into a data center,” the team said. “We are turning blockchains into verifiers of AI behavior.”
Under the PoC model, AI agents submit their workloads to an off-chain execution layer, which can leverage the infrastructure of partners such as AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, and then publish cryptographic evidence of the computation to the Origins chain. This allows applications to prove that a model actually ran a given message or data pipeline, without forcing each full node to rerun the underlying workload. The project frames this as a middle path between fully centralized AI APIs and heavy “AI in L1” experiments that risk clogging up general-purpose chains.
The broader context is a wave of funding towards modular AI blockchains. In 2024, 0G Labs raised $35 million in pre-seed to build a modular AI data availability layer, arguing that “a core infrastructure needs to be built” before today’s centralized AI stacks can connect to Web3. More recently, networks such as Hemi have raised eight-figure rounds to connect Bitcoin and Ethereum as modular execution and settlement layers, a sign that investors are comfortable backing deep technical infrastructure plays rather than just consumer applications. Origins effectively aims to do the same at the AI layer, but with a strict focus on verifiable agent workloads.
Main sponsor Animoca Brands has spent years assembling one of the broadest Web3 portfolios, with more than 600 investments that encompass games, NFTsand infrastructure. Your president, Yat Siuhas often argued that the true unlock of Web3 is “internet-scale digital property rights,” and Origins fits neatly into that thesis by seeking to make AI-generated results proprietary and auditable rather than ephemeral. In a recent interview, Siu described Animoca as “a gateway to Web3 utility tokens” – as opposed to pure memecoins – and said the company now supports an infrastructure that brings institutional-level transparency and accountability to cryptocurrencies.
For crypto markets, the bet is simple but ambitious: if AI As agents manage portfolios, underwrite loans or trade on decentralized exchanges, they will need a chain where their decisions can be inspected and, if necessary, questioned. Origins Network wants to be that network.
