Summary
- Origins Network has raised $8 million in strategic funding to build a custom modular blockchain for AI agents with verifiable computation.
- The round involves Animoca Brands and other Web3 investors, with the project pitching a “Proof of Computation” design that separates heavy AI workloads from onchain authentication.
- Origins already works with AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud, positioning itself at the intersection of crypto infrastructure and the fast-growing agentic AI stack.
Origins Network has secured $8 million in strategic funding to build a modular blockchain purpose-built for AI agents, banking on verifiable computing power to provide the missing layer of trust for the next wave of autonomous systems. The round, announced on March 23, 2026, includes Animoca brands alongside TBV, Candaq, Castrum Istanbul and Coinvestor Ventures, with the team describing the cap table as a mix of Web3, AI and cloud-native backers.
In a statement, Origins said it wants to make AI “auditable, not mystical,” arguing that users should be able to audit how an AI agent arrived at a result, rather than accepting blackbox output. To do that, the network is introducing Proof of Computation (PoC), a design where heavy AI inference happens off-chain on a GPU-rich infrastructure, while concise proofs of that work are verified and handled 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 like AWS, Tencent Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud — and then send cryptographic proof of the computation back to Origins’ chain. This allows applications to prove that a model actually executed a given prompt or data pipeline, without forcing each entire node to re-execute the underlying workload. The project sees this as a middle ground between fully centralized AI APIs and heavy “AI on L1” experiments that risk clogging the general-purpose chains.
The broader context is a wave of funding for modular AI blockchains. In 2024, 0G Labs raised $35 million at pre-seed to build a modular layer for AI data availability, arguing that “the core infrastructure needs to be built” before today’s centralized AI stacks can be connected 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 supporting deep, technical infrastructure plays rather than just consumer apps. Origins essentially aims to do the same at the AI layer, but with a tight focus on verifiable agentic workloads.
Leadbacker Animoca Brands has spent years building one of the broadest Web3 portfolios, with more than 600 investments in gaming, NFTs and infrastructure. Its chairman, Jat Siuhas often argued that the real enabler of Web3 is “digital property rights at the Internet scale,” and Origins fits right into that statement by attempting to make AI-generated results proprietary and controllable rather than ephemeral. In a recent interview, Siu described Animoca as “a gateway to Web3’s utility tokens” – as opposed to pure memecoins – and said the company is now backing an infrastructure that brings institutional transparency and accountability to crypto.
For crypto markets, the bet is simple but ambitious: If AI agents are going to manage portfolios, make loans or trade on decentralized exchanges, they need a chain where their decisions can be inspected and, if necessary, challenged. Origins Network wants to be that chain.
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