Blockchain-AI startup Swarm Network has secured $13 million in funding to develop a decentralized protocol that verifies artificial intelligence-generated content onchain. The company announced the raise on Wednesday, detailing a hybrid funding model that combines NFT licensing with strategic investments.
A bulk of the capital—$10 million—was raised through the sale of operational licenses issued as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). These licenses grant holders the right to run AI agents on the network and earn daily rewards for helping to maintain and validate data flows across the protocol.
An additional $3 million was raised from institutional backers, including Sui (SUI), Ghaf Capital, Brinc, Y2Z, and Zerostage. These funds were secured following Swarm’s participation in the SuiHub global accelerator, based in Dubai, signaling growing regional and institutional interest in decentralized AI frameworks.
Swarm aims to create infrastructure where AI-generated offchain data can be made verifiable and trustable onchain. Its protocol has already seen early adoption through Rollup News, an AI-powered fact-checking platform that claims to have verified over 3 million posts from more than 128,000 users.
The project’s momentum reflects a broader trend: the rapid convergence of artificial intelligence and Web3. The rise of AI agents—autonomous bots capable of executing tasks across decentralized networks—is accelerating demand for trust-minimized systems that can track, audit, and verify machine-generated outputs.
Swarm’s license model enables a decentralized group of contributors to participate directly in running AI infrastructure, creating a new layer of accountability in AI systems.
This development adds to a wave of recent activity in the space. Hedge fund Numerai secured a $500 million allocation from JPMorgan Asset Management, while Kraken acquired Capitalise.ai, and TeraWulf pivoted into AI infrastructure hosting.
While decentralized AI remains nascent, industry leaders believe that blockchain-backed verification will become essential as AI continues to generate more of the internet’s content. Swarm’s protocol could play a foundational role in enabling this future—starting with news, and potentially expanding into science, data marketplaces, and governance systems.
