Before the world became fixated on artificial intelligence, thanks to advances in genetic artificial intelligence, cryptocurrencies were the darling of many investors. So when some venture capital firms began quickly shifting their focus between AI and crypto, industry watchers scorned their opportunism. Meanwhile, a wave of entrepreneurs has emerged as ardent advocates for the convergence of artificial intelligence and crypto. Vitalik Buterin, the core founder of the Ethereum blockchain network, published an article last month that explores four potential applications of “AI + crypto”, sparking excitement among his Twitter followers. Use cases have yet to be proven at scale.
A Singapore-based startup is trying to show that combining AI and crypto isn’t just a fad. Ultiverse, which is said to be an “AI-powered” platform for producing and publishing crypto games, has secured backing from some reputable investors. It recently raised $4 million in a strategic funding round led by IDG Capital, a venture capital firm known for investing in Chinese tech titans Tencent, Baidu and Xiaomi, as well as crypto startups Coinbase and Circle, among others.
Other investors participating in the round include Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, MorningStar Ventures, Taiko, ZetaChain, Manta Network, DWF Venture and Jacob KO. The new investment raised Ultiverse’s valuation to $150 million.
How exactly does Ultiverse use AI in its crypto-verse? In an interview with TechCrunch, company co-founder Jimmy Liu, who previously ran his family’s private equity firm, suggested that AI could be used to “accelerate production and user adoption.”
Instead of building AI models from scratch, Ultiverse uses existing models of major languages, such as GPT-4, Llama, and Stable Diffusion, to train non-player characters in the game so that each player has a different experience depending on their interaction of with the NPCs. Players can also create their own AI agents to act on their behalf.
“This kind of production process in the past could take days or even weeks. We needed more than one person dedicated to doing this. But now, with the integration of artificial intelligence, we have reduced the time and cost to produce the same amount of content as before,” said Liu.
Adapting AI to the game design process may not be the startup’s ultimate competitive advantage. After all, other studios can easily make use of LLMs the same way it does. There are plenty of examples of how gaming companies have adopted genetic AI to create artwork, create level sections, and even invent game models for other developers.
Then there is the eternal debate surrounding crypto games, which revolves around the question of whether they actually create tangible value for the industry by enabling user ownership and liquidity of assets, or whether they exist primarily to benefit players such as a jackpot. Overall, the industry’s reputation has been tarnished by play-to-earn titles like Axie Infinity that have been compared to pyramid schemes.
So far, Ultiverse has published three games, including a mobile cricket game with 200,000 unique active wallet addresses, most of which are from India and Pakistan, where the sport is extremely popular. The startup has 7.3 million registered users across all its games as of December, with monthly active users averaging 830,000.
By using an increasingly common crypto-wallet feature called “account removal,” which removes many of the technical complexities of self-curated wallets, the game of cricket has managed to attract mostly non-crypto users who previously had no wallet, according to with Liu.
“It’s pretty much seamless until they have to withdraw the reward after a certain amount of time, when they notice that, okay, this isn’t just a game,” the founder said. “This approach helps us grow and convert those, what we call web2 gamers who have never experimented with web3 before, to become part of our ecosystem.”
“Ultiverse is a one-stop AI-powered solution for web3 gaming production and publishing, poised to revolutionize the industry,” an IDG Capital spokesperson said in a rosy statement. The company has also invested in other major crypto projects, including Ripple, ImToken, and KuCoin. “This investment signifies our belief in their potential to not only drive but transform the way games are developed and experienced worldwide.”
