Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
Despite a significant decrease in funding in the crypto space, some projects are still attracting venture capital attention. On December 10th, Surf successfully raised $15 million, led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and DCG. Surf positions itself as an AI intelligence platform specifically designed for cryptocurrency; what makes it stand out?
As is well known, large-scale models still suffer from "illusions" that can lead to biased results. Furthermore, the complexity and intricacies of cryptocurrency analysis, as a vertical market, cannot be perfectly represented by general-purpose models. Surf provides accurate and reliable insights through a simple chat interface, helping traders, researchers, and investors avoid common errors of general-purpose AI models.
In short, what Surf wants to do is to become the ChatGPT of the Crypto world.
At its core, Surf is a multi-agent architecture AI system that combines proprietary models with industry-leading data sources to deliver accuracy exceeding that of general-purpose LLMs. Users can ask questions via a chat interface, ranging from basic knowledge (such as "What is a Bitcoin halving?") to advanced analytics (such as "Analyze the on-chain activity and social sentiment of a particular token"). The platform integrates social sentiment, on-chain activity, and token market behavior in real time, providing insights from a single point of entry and avoiding the errors and tediousness of manual research.
In terms of performance, Surf version 1.0 stands out in the CAIA benchmark. This benchmark, developed by Surf in collaboration with Princeton University, evaluates the ability of AI models to perform tasks comprehension-level human analysts. The results show that Surf outperforms models like ChatGPT and Grok by 4 times on cryptographically specific tasks, providing more concrete references and fewer errors.
Furthermore, Surf supports on-chain data tracking across more than 40 blockchain networks, helping users understand fund flows, wallet behavior, and protocol activity. It's not just a research tool but also acts as a trading assistant, allowing users to access real-time market data and answers supported by a crypto knowledge base, much like conversing with ChatGPT. Recently, Surf also launched a mobile app, further lowering the barrier to information access.
Unlike other AI assistants, Surf emphasizes "trust." Ryan Li stated in an interview, "When people make financial decisions, they need credible information. General-purpose AI tools weren't built for that. We built Surf to provide reliable support in the rapidly changing crypto market." This philosophy stems from the unique challenges of crypto data: highly volatile markets, diverse and manipulated information sources. Surf's proprietary training ensures higher contextual understanding and detail accuracy, avoiding common failures of general-purpose models in crypto scenarios.
Surf was co-founded by Ryan Li, a graduate of UC Berkeley with bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Ryan was formerly the CTO of BitTorrent and a co-founder of CyberConnect. In May 2024, the decentralized social platform CyberConnect transformed into a social restaking modular L2 platform, rebranding and changing its name to Cyber, while simultaneously spinning off Link3 as an independent brand.
According to its official disclosure, Ryan Li personally experienced the pain points of AI in the crypto market. General-purpose AI platforms output inaccurate or fabricated information, which could lead to huge losses for traders. Based on this observation, Ryan decided to create Surf—an AI model specifically designed for crypto.
Surf launched by invitation only in July 2025 and opened to the public in September. Currently, with a team of fewer than 30 people, it has already achieved millions of dollars in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Within just a few months, the platform generated over 1 million research reports, attracted over 80,000 users, and experienced a monthly growth rate of 50%.
Like other large-scale models, Surf uses a paid subscription model. Free users can use Ask and Research, but with limited quotas. Paid members have higher usage limits and enjoy exclusive support.
Currently, information on the official website indicates that Surf has no plans to issue tokens.
Following this round of financing, Surf will soon launch Surf 2.0, which the company states will be the most advanced proprietary model. In addition, it will feature extended data pipelines designed for market and on-chain intelligence, as well as additional proxies capable of handling complex, multi-step analysis workflows.
