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HK-based AI trading startup Inference bags $20m seed round
Hong Kong-based Inference Research has launched a US$20 million seed funding round led by Avenir Group, an Asia-based investment group.
Founded by Luke Li, former co-founder and head of trading at Amber Group, the company develops AI-native quantitative trading systems that integrate digital assets and traditional finance.
The funding will support infrastructure expansion and talent recruitment, including quants, engineers, and researchers.
Avenir Group aims to help build institutional-grade infrastructure to address challenges such as asset pricing and liquidity.
The firm combines sovereign AI technology with trading discipline across digital and traditional markets.
It originated from Mr Li Lin’s family office and invests in digital assets, trading platforms, and financial infrastructure.
🔗 Source: Inference Research
🧠 Food for thought
Implications, context, and why it matters.
Avenir’s investment fits its plan for TradFi and crypto to work together
- Avenir Group led a US$20 million seed round for Inference Research, matching its stated bets on PayFi solutions (payments-focused financial services built on modern rails), real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, digital asset platforms, and high-performance trading 1.
- Its public outlook lists four pillars for this approach: PayFi solutions, real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, digital asset platforms, and high-performance trading systems 1.
- Third-party reporting says Avenir holds about US$1.189 billion of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) shares based on an SEC 13F filing, and that figure should be treated as reported rather than independently verified here 2.
- Alongside funding, Avenir has run industry roundtables on institutional trading infrastructure, giving it a role as a host as well as an investor 3.
The deal taps seasoned crypto operators working on AI-driven trading infrastructure
- Inference Research was founded by Luke Li, the former Amber Group co-founder and head of trading, following a pattern of crypto-native operators creating AI-driven infrastructure for digital assets and traditional markets 4.
- The company aims for an “AI-native quantitative franchise” that targets efficiency gaps between those markets 5.
- This approach could squeeze traditional quantitative trading firms that add AI onto older systems, since the newer entrants start with AI-centric architecture from day one.
- Li’s link to another venture, Elsa, which targets asset pricing and liquidity challenges, hints at a wider push to assemble connected, asset-agnostic market infrastructure tools 6.
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