AI Meets Crypto: A New Kind of Evaluation Platform
Yupp, an AI startup co-founded by veterans from Coinbase, Google, and X, has emerged from stealth with a bold mission: to build a decentralised, user-driven AI model evaluation platform powered by blockchain incentives. The company announced the close of a $33 million seed round led by a16z crypto, the cryptocurrency arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Founded in June 2024 by Pankaj Gupta and AI lead Gilad Mishne, Yupp offers a free platform that allows users to compare outputs from leading AI models, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and Llama, side by side. It incentivises user feedback through onchain rewards, using stablecoins on Base and Solana, and fiat integrations via Stripe, PayPal, and Coinbase.
Star-Studded Investor Backing
In addition to a16z crypto, the round drew participation from more than 45 angel investors and key industry names. Among them: Google’s Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Pinterest co-founder Evan Sharp, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas, Cred founder Kunal Shah, and Coinbase CLO Paul Grewal. Coinbase Ventures also joined the round.
The funding round was completed in 2024, but the platform remained in stealth for over six months until its recent public unveiling.
How Yupp Works: Feedback as Fuel
At the heart of Yupp is a simple premise: the best way to evaluate AI models is to let users decide. Users can input a question and receive multiple responses from different AI models. By choosing the most helpful responses and offering feedback, users contribute to a massive data pool used to improve model evaluation and training.
In return, they earn reward credits, powered by crypto, for their contributions. This feedback loop is central to the platform’s ability to offer even premium models at no cost, while maintaining high standards of privacy and transparency. All chats remain private unless users opt to make them public.
Yupp uses this data to generate the “Yupp VIBE Score,” a public leaderboard that reflects which AI models perform best across different tasks, based on aggregated user feedback. This model-agnostic approach offers both users and AI developers deeper insights into real-world performance.
Why Crypto? Transparency, Ownership, Trust
a16z crypto’s Chris Dixon and Elizabeth Harkavy explained the firm’s investment rationale: “We believe crypto can bring transparency and ownership to this murky area of AI. Blockchains make it easier for people to receive rewards for their contributions and help builders trust the feedback data they’re using. Everyone wins: users, developers, and the wider AI ecosystem.”
Yupp’s use of crypto ensures that contributors around the world are fairly rewarded for their input and that AI companies get high-quality, trustworthy feedback. With stablecoins providing liquidity and predictability, Yupp is building a sustainable feedback infrastructure that sidesteps the need for centralised gatekeepers.
Market Context: AI-Crypto Synergy Attracts Attention
Yupp’s emergence comes at a time of growing interest in AI and crypto convergence. As of early November 2023, the total crypto market capitalisation stood at $1.6 trillion, with Bitcoin hovering around $43,000 and stablecoins holding a market cap above $130 billion.
This environment favours utility-driven projects like Yupp, which leverage blockchain’s strengths to address real-world problems. The platform’s use of stablecoins minimises volatility and has sparked institutional interest, mirroring the rise in trading volumes across AI-related tokens.
Notably, tokens like Fetch.ai (FET) and SingularityNET (AGIX) saw 24-hour gains of 4.7% and 3.2%, respectively, aligning with social media buzz surrounding AI-crypto platforms. This correlation points to new trading opportunities in AI utility tokens, especially those backed by stablecoin pairs like USDT, as investors seek fundamentals over speculation.
The Road Ahead for Yupp
Yupp’s goal is clear: to become the default evaluation layer for the next generation of AI. By tapping into decentralised human feedback at scale and rewarding contributors transparently, the company aims to transform how AI models are refined and trusted.
As the boundaries between AI and blockchain continue to blur, Yupp’s model could represent the future of participatory AI, one where users help shape intelligent systems and are rewarded fairly for doing so.
