Crunch Lab has raised $5 million in a strategic funding round co-led by Galaxy Ventures and Road Capital, with participation from VanEck and Multicoin in June. This brings total funding to $10 million following its $3.5 million seed round in 2024.
Crunch Lab, the core contributor of CrunchDAO, raised a $5M round led by Galaxy Ventures and Road Capital. The project has secured total funding of $10M, following a $3.5M seed round in 2024.
With this round, Crunch Lab will accelerate platform development and expand into new industries beyond finance and biomedical research. Earlier this year, CrunchDAO was also selected for the Solana Incubator’s second cohort, further validating its technical approach and market potential.
Crunch Lab already delivers accurate data for top institutions, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Research Lab and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. The project saves expenses on AI services by tapping CrunchDAO’s network of 10,000+ machine learning engineers and 1,200+ PhDs through structured modeling challenges called Crunches.
Crunch Lab offers production-ready data
Crunch Lab has gone beyond the concept of crowdsourced computing, already delivering real-world applications. ADIA Lab achieved 17% improvement in cross-sectional asset price predictions.
Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard is also using Crunch Lab for cancer gene research. The data is also used for Mid+One™, a crowdsourced mid-market pricing engine, implemented by a global investment bank
‘AI today is constrained by hiring bottlenecks, siloed teams and an inability to scale effectively,’ said Jean Herelle, CEO of Crunch Lab and CrunchDAO.
‘We’ve flipped that model. Instead of competing for scarce talent, we give enterprises secure access to all of it through a decentralized network.’
Crunch transforms tasks into permissionless challenges
Crunch decreases the load of AI by transforming enterprise forecasting problems into encrypted modeling challenges, with contributors competing to build the best models. Rewards are distributed purely on performance, ensuring a meritocratic and continuously improving system.
‘This isn’t theoretical hype—it’s proven,’ added Herelle. ‘When thousands of practitioners compete, you uncover solutions even the best internal teams miss.’
‘We believe Crunch Lab represents one of the most compelling attempts to connect global quants with enterprises at scale,’ added Thomas Bailey of Road Capital.
Crunch Lab is building an intelligence layer compatible with multiple global enterprises, said Will Nuelle, General Partner at Galaxy Ventures. The decentralized approach is used to predict asset prices, optimize energy demand, or advance healthcare diagnostics.
The trillion-dollar AI market is also potentially compatible with open protocols like Crunch. The platform is one of the few to offer crowdsourced analysis for multiple industries.
