CARV: Gaming And AI Data Layer Company Closes $10 Million

By Amit Chowdhry • Apr 29, 2024

CARV, a modular data layer for gaming and AI, announced a $10 million Series A funding round on the heels of its recent strategic funding round. With this new funding round from industry leaders, CARV will double down on building the most significant modular data layer for gaming and AI, maximizing data innovation.

The Series A funding round was led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures, with participation from key investors such as Consensys (developer of MetaMask and Linea), OKX Ventures, Fenbushi Capital, No Limit Holdings, Draper Dragon, Arweave, LiquidX, MARBLEX (the web3 arm of Netmarble), and others. And this adds to the notable investors already on CARV’s cap table, including HashKey Capital, Infinity Ventures Crypto, and Temasek Holding’s subsidiary, Vertex Ventures.

CARV offers gaming and AI development with holistic, high-quality data reinforced with human feedback in a regulatory-compliant, trustless manner. The company’s solution has three parts.

1.) CARV Protocol is a modular cross-chain data layer encompassing components for authentication, storage, processing, and monetization. And adhering to the ERC-7231 standard recently greenlit by the Ethereum Community, CARV ID aggregates over 1 million users’ web2 and web3 identities, promoting data self-sovereignty.

2.) CARV Play is the cross-platform credentialing system and the largest web3 gaming distribution and social platform. And with its average daily active wallet count exceeding 500,000 in the past quarter, CARV Play is among the top three most active ecosystems on chains like Linea, opBNB, zkSync, and Ronin, providing an enhanced gaming experience for 2.5M gamers to share data, build credentials, play games, and earn rewards. Around 30% of all existing web3 games have already been onboarded onto the platform, from MARBLEX and Shrapnel to Off the Grid, Pixelmon, and Pixels.

3.) CARV’s AI Agent CARA is the personalized gaming assistant with seamless integration of web3 wallets, TON-based games, and social networking. CARA can recommend games, activities, projects, and airdrops based on the player’s game and platform data.

KEY QUOTES:

“The backing from these top investors underscores their confidence in our mission to reshape data ownership and value distribution. For too long, users’ data has fueled economic growth without them sharing the value created. The AI boom has increased demand for high-quality data for model training, but brands face challenges targeting users and ethically sourcing data amid tightening regulations. CARV empowers users to own, contribute, and monetize their data, capturing opportunities from the adtech reshuffling and AI revolution by putting them back in control.”

“The result of our ecosystem is an incentive-aligned infrastructure that reimagines the internet, placing individuals at the core of their digital interactions with the ability to obtain a lifetime membership for passive income. We can’t wait for what’s ahead.”

– Victor Yu, CARV co-founder

“CARV stands out as a visionary in leveraging blockchain technology to enhance user agency and privacy in the digital realm. Their rapid growth and substantial user engagement speak volumes of their impact in the gaming and AI sectors. We are thrilled to support CARV’s journey as they continue to innovate and lead in the intersection of gaming and data.”

– Boris Revsin, Managing Director of Tribe Capital

“We’re supporting CARV because its revolutionary approach is reshaping the way we manage decentralized data. CARV’s modular cross-chain protocol and ID aggregation solutions cultivate data self-sovereignty and integrity, all while emphasizing security and efficiency. We’re excited about the vast potential this partnership holds and are eager to see how the synergy between OKX’s Web3 product suite and CARV’s advanced cross-chain data layer will unfold.”

– Jeff Ren, Partner of OKX Ventures

“CARV is the leading platform enabling gamers to share value captured from their data in a consent-based, privacy-preserving manner while also solving the game discovery problem in web3. They have been a key partner for Linea since day one and we are excited to support them on the next stage of their journey.”

– Michael Camarda, Sr Director of Corporate Development at Consensys