Timothy Morano Sep 10, 2024 01:12
a16z Crypto has announced the 21 startups selected for its CSX Fall 2024 cohort, focusing on AI, DeFi, infrastructure, and consumer applications.
a16z Crypto has unveiled the 21 startups chosen for its Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) Fall 2024 program, which kicks off this week in New York City. This cohort will participate in an intensive eight-week program designed to provide firsthand lessons from leading crypto founders, guidance from a16z’s investing and operating teams, and opportunities to build connections within the broader a16z network, according to a16z crypto.
Diverse Global Representation
The selected companies hail from 11 different countries, including Austria, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Germany, Japan, Poland, Portugal, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the US (including Puerto Rico). These startups are working on a wide array of projects across the crypto stack, including artificial intelligence (AI), decentralized finance (DeFi), infrastructure, and consumer applications such as photo sharing and mapping.
Highlighted Startups
The CSX Fall 2024 cohort includes:
- Anera Labs: Building liquidity infrastructure that unites all onchain liquidity.
- Banyan: Uses AI to bridge communication gaps at work and bring clarity to the enterprise.
- Blocksense: Enables creation of oracles that can leverage internet data and CPU/GPU computations.
- Cork Protocol: Risk pricing protocol accelerating onchain credit.
- Dot: Transforms user-created pixel art into game pieces for onchain games.
- Fermah: Building a universal zero-knowledge proof generation layer.
- Future Primitive: Creating a new home for internet photo pals.
- Kuzco: A marketplace for LLM inference.
- MeshMap: Building a 3D map of the world and a network of AR content.
- Opacity Labs: Privately verifies web2 data with zkTLS.
- OpenGradient: Building a blockchain that aims to bring the world’s compute onchain.
- PIN AI: Building an open platform for personal AI (data+agents).
- Pod: A new L1 primitive that is blockless, leaderless and relaxes the notion of transaction total ordering.
- Sekai: Makes it easy to create, share, and monetize interactive narratives.
- Skyfire: An open payment protocol which enables AI agents to be able to pay for anything.
- Suave: Enables DApps to accept any token from any wallet on any blockchain.
- t1: Real-time proof generation to unify Ethereum.
- TACEO: MPC encrypted compute for Web3.
- Term Labs: A DeFi lending platform that matches borrowers and lenders at fixed rates.
- vlayer labs: Trustless verifiable data infrastructure powered by zero-knowledge proofs.
- zkSpin: Building highly-parallel blockchain to run demanding DApps onchain.
Future Plans
This is the second CSX cohort in 2024, following the Spring program in London, which concluded with a Demo Day in June. The next CSX cohort will be hosted in San Francisco in Spring 2025, with applications opening in early January. a16z CSX invests a minimum of $500,000 in each accepted company, providing significant financial support to help these startups achieve product-market fit.
Congratulations to all the CSX Fall 2024 companies as they embark on this exciting journey.
Image source: Shutterstock
