Thanks to generative AI, bitcoin was a favorite among investors before the world got obsessed with AI. When several venture capital companies quickly switched between AI and crypto, industry observers criticized their opportunism. Meanwhile, a wave of entrepreneurs championed AI-crypto convergence. Last month, Ethereum blockchain network inventor Vitalik Buterin wrote about four potential uses of “AI + crypto,” piqueing Twitter followers’ interest. The use cases are unproven at scale.
A Singaporean firm is aiming to prove that AI and crypto aren’t fads. Several prominent investors have backed Ultiverse, an “AI-powered” crypto game manufacturing and publishing platform. It received $4 million in a strategic investment round run by IDG Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested in Tencent, Baidu, Xiaomi, Coinbase, and Circle.
Animoca Brands, Polygon Ventures, MorningStar Ventures, Taiko, ZetaChain, Manta Network, DWF Venture, and Jacob KO also invested. Ultiverse’s value rose to $150 million after the financing.
How does Ultiverse use AI in crypto? Jimmy Liu, the company’s co-founder who headed his family’s private equity business, told Eltrys that AI can “accelerate production and user adoption.”
Ultiverse trains its in-game non-player characters utilizing huge language models like GPT-4, Llama, and Stable Diffusion, so each player will have a distinct experience based on their interaction with the NPCs. Players may also develop AI bots to represent them.
In the past, this manufacturing process may have taken days or weeks. Multiple people were required to achieve it. However, AI integration has lowered the time and cost of producing the same quantity of material, said Liu.
Using AI in game creation may not be the startup’s biggest advantage. Other studios may easily utilize LLMs like it. Several gaming companies have used generative AI to create visual assets, level segments, and game models for other developers.
Crypto games’ recurring issue is whether they create genuine value for the business by permitting user ownership and liquidity of assets or by profiting from players like a jackpot. Pyramid scheme-type “play-to-earn” games like Axie Infinity have tarnished the industry.
Ultiverse has produced three games, including a mobile cricket game with 200,000 unique active wallet addresses, mostly from India and Pakistan, where cricket is popular. By December, the firm had 7.3 million registered players across all its games and 830,000 monthly active users.
According to Liu, the cricket game attracted largely non-crypto users who didn’t possess a wallet using “account abstraction,” a popular crypto wallet feature that simplifies self-custodial wallets.
“It’s pretty much seamless until they need to withdraw the reward after a certain time when they realize this isn’t just a game,” said the founder. “That approach helps us grow and convert web2 gamers who never tried web3 to join our ecosystem.”
An IDG Capital spokesman praised Ultiverse as an AI-powered, one-stop solution for web3 game creation and publication that will transform the industry. The company has also invested in Ripple, ImToken, and KuCoin. “This investment shows our belief in their ability to lead and transform global game development and experience.”
