After all this talk about the tech and product of @OpenGradient
Let's take a moment to revisit a crucial question that often gets overlooked: who’s behind this project, and who’s funding it?
First off, the person. The founder and CEO is named Matthew Wang. Before OpenGradient, he was a research engineer at TwoSigma.
TwoSigma is one of Wall Street's top quantitative hedge funds, and the folks there have an almost obsessive skepticism about the reliability of "model outputs."
This background explains two things: why this project is so committed to "verifiable AI," and why its flagship product is BitQuant, a quant analyst tool. Anyone who’s spent time in the quantitative world inherently distrusts black boxes.
The products he’s developing naturally revolve around "enabling you to verify." Now, about the funding. Last year, they raised $9.5 million, led by a16z crypto, with Coinbase Ventures and SV Angel participating, and the angel list includes names like Balaji, the founder of NEAR, and the founder of Polygon.
This lineup isn’t exactly top-tier, but it’s solid money in the AI and crypto infrastructure space. Professional capital does its homework before investing—they check the code, look at the team, and they’ve put real money on the line, which at least indicates that this project has passed a much stricter filter than retail investors.
But as usual, these are just bonus points, not a guarantee.
Even top-tier funds can miss the mark; in this cycle, there are plenty of examples. What’s more critical is that the institutional entry cost is much lower than yours, and they often exit before you do. When the tokens unlock and they cash out, it’s usually later investors who take the hit.
A nice founder resume and famous investors can help screen out a bunch of projects that are just hype, but once that’s done, you still need to keep an eye on whether there are real users, and if the demand for payment is growing—don’t get the order wrong. Many people get lured in by a shiny resume, only to find out they’re not actually betting on a product.
#OPG #OpenGradient $OPG
Let's take a moment to revisit a crucial question that often gets overlooked: who’s behind this project, and who’s funding it?
First off, the person. The founder and CEO is named Matthew Wang. Before OpenGradient, he was a research engineer at TwoSigma.
TwoSigma is one of Wall Street's top quantitative hedge funds, and the folks there have an almost obsessive skepticism about the reliability of "model outputs."
This background explains two things: why this project is so committed to "verifiable AI," and why its flagship product is BitQuant, a quant analyst tool. Anyone who’s spent time in the quantitative world inherently distrusts black boxes.
The products he’s developing naturally revolve around "enabling you to verify." Now, about the funding. Last year, they raised $9.5 million, led by a16z crypto, with Coinbase Ventures and SV Angel participating, and the angel list includes names like Balaji, the founder of NEAR, and the founder of Polygon.
This lineup isn’t exactly top-tier, but it’s solid money in the AI and crypto infrastructure space. Professional capital does its homework before investing—they check the code, look at the team, and they’ve put real money on the line, which at least indicates that this project has passed a much stricter filter than retail investors.
But as usual, these are just bonus points, not a guarantee.
Even top-tier funds can miss the mark; in this cycle, there are plenty of examples. What’s more critical is that the institutional entry cost is much lower than yours, and they often exit before you do. When the tokens unlock and they cash out, it’s usually later investors who take the hit.
A nice founder resume and famous investors can help screen out a bunch of projects that are just hype, but once that’s done, you still need to keep an eye on whether there are real users, and if the demand for payment is growing—don’t get the order wrong. Many people get lured in by a shiny resume, only to find out they’re not actually betting on a product.
#OPG #OpenGradient $OPG