AI Crypto Analytics Platform Surf Secures $15M Led by Pantera Capital

Surf, an AI intelligence platform purpose-built for analyzing digital assets, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital. The investment saw participation from prominent crypto venture firms Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group (DCG).

The capital will fuel the development of Surf 2.0, a more advanced iteration of its platform featuring expanded proprietary datasets and new AI agents capable of executing complex, multi-step analytical workflows traditionally handled by human analysts. The funding will also support the launch of Surf Enterprise, an offering with enhanced security controls, dedicated infrastructure, and SOC 2 compliance designed for institutional clients.

Surf's core value proposition lies in its domain-specific models trained for crypto analysis, which it claims provides greater accuracy than general-purpose large language models (LLMs). The company's first model, Surf 1.0, reportedly outperformed competitors by up to 4x on the CAIA benchmark, a test evaluating an AI's ability to perform tasks of a junior human analyst.

The platform employs a multi-agent architecture to analyze social sentiment, on-chain activity, and token and market behavior, delivering insights through a chat interface. Since its public launch in July, Surf has reported strong traction, including millions in annual recurring revenue, over 1 million research reports generated, and 50% month-over-month growth. The company states that 80% of top crypto exchanges and research firms are already using its service.

"When people make financial decisions, they want information they can trust. Generic AI tools aren’t built for that," said Ryan Li, Co-founder and CEO of Surf. Nihal Maunder, Partner at lead investor Pantera Capital, added, "Digital asset research has always required a level of context and detail that general LLMs don’t handle well. Surf is one of the first teams to take that seriously."