Singapore crypto startup raises $16m to bring NFTs to life

Most non-fungible tokens (NFT) that are created and traded now are in the form of static images, gifs, and videos. What would happen if we could evolve them into intelligent creatures that can interact with us or even with other NFTs, like some avatars that we see in science fiction movies?

Singapore-based platform Alethea AI has just emerged from stealth mode to make that a reality.

Alice, an intelligent NFT made by Alethea Ai / Photo credit: Alethea AI

The company is part of a select group that’s helping test Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), a language model that can produce human-like text. Through Alethea’s platform, users can create interactive NFTs so they can come “alive.”

In June this year, the company put its intelligent NFT (iNFT) on auction through Sotheby’s Natively Digital collection, where it was sold for US$478,000.

In order to continue developing the platform, Alethea has just raised US$16 million through a private token sale with Metapurse and Crypto.com Capital as lead purchasers.

Prominent investors and individuals in crypto industries, such as billionaire Mark Cuban, Alameda Research, Multicoin, Galaxy Interactive, Dapper Labs, LD Capital, Bitkraft, HOF Capital, Gemini Frontier Fund, Borderless Capital, Whitestar Capital, Yield Guild Games co-founder Gabby Dizon, and Bitscale also participated in this sale.

“We envision a metaverse populated by millions of iNFTs and humans, each with their own distinct personality traits, free-flowing autonomy and interactive capabilities,” says Alethea chief executive Arif Khan in a statement.

Read also: Tech in Asia Explains: The wacky world of NFTs

According to crypto research company Messari, secondary sales of NFT avatars like cryptopunks almost hit US$600 million in the first half of this year. Global payment firm Visa has even entered the NFT market by purchasing a cryptopunk for around US$150,000 this week.