dAGI Accelerator

The program

Thesis

AI and agentic systems are the largest technological wave and the fastest economic transformation in the history of the world. Decentralized, machine-speed coordination outpaces traditional, hierarchical systems. New economic rails, built on programmable, trustless protocols are essential to efficiently create, distribute, and regulate value in this emerging cybernetic economy.

For founders, this is an opportunity to build transformative products that will ensure open, permissionless access to the benefits of AI while facilitating the transition to the programmable cybernetic economy.

>> Autonomous agents
   Identity, wallets, smart contracts for interaction with autonomous agents
   Agentic economy [customer-agent, agent-agent, agent-human worker]
   Payment systems and financial primitives for AI

>> Data pipelines
   Collaborative and crowdsourced RAG datasets, labelling, synthetic data generation
   Crowdsourced pre-training and fine-tuning

>> Distributed infrastructure
   Inference on edge devices or networks of edge devices
   Aggregation, decentralized marketplace and routing of compute providers
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>> User-owned models — specialized and optimized models:
   custom models
   distillation techniques and networks
   inference optimizations and quantization

>> Self-sovereign data and identity for AI

Benefits

This is an 8-week startup accelerator program for top-tier founders in the AI and Crypto space. Our small cohort size (8 teams only) ensures that we can provide founders with the resources, support, and connections needed to accelerate toward Demo Day.

No fees or equity. We don't take participation fees or upfront equity commitments.

Funding. Up to $500k potential investment from Delphi Labs / cyber•Fund

Compute. Up to $200k in compute credits with our partners

Mentorship. From Delphi Labs, Delphi Ventures, Lido, p2p.org.
[ Subject to opt-in of participating mentors ]

Expertise. Expert advise on AI/ML, infra, token design, GTM, strategy iteration, positioning, product, fundraising and marketing

Meaningful support. Meaningful, deep support and potential subsequent incubation beyond superficial check-ins. Weekly calls with additional focused ad-hoc sessions wherever applicable

Workshops. Weekly workshops and moderated mastermind sessions with experts

Format of the program

dAGI Hack Events — photo from previous events

This is an intensive program for those who are committed to moving their project toward real world deployment:

Teams are expected to work full-time on their projects.

Open async communication with weekly office hours or guest speakers.

We plan two IRL events: in-person kick-off and demo day (with airfare reimbursements).

Teams are expected to be available for additional calls with partners or potential customers.

Program concludes with a livestreamed Demo Day with Tier 1 VCs eager to fund the most promising teams.

Requirements for teams

dAGI is for founders building distributed AI components, agents and on-chain market mechanisms that power everything from decentralized post-training, fine-tuning, agent coordination to profit-sharing.

[01]

We are searching for driven founders with a strong mission to build an AI-based economy.

[02]

Ideal founders will have a technical background in AI/ML research or engineering, or a unique market perspective.

[03]

We want founders who are not afraid to have strong opinions.

**Organizers**

cyber•Fund is a founder-led investment firm accelerating the cybereconomy. We allocate capital to the best startups in distributed AI to ensure a healthy transformation to a cybernetic economy that benefits humanity.

Over the last 10 years we’ve funded 150+ early stage investments including Ethereum, Solana, Celestia, EigenLayer,and actively contributed to projects such as P2P.org, =nil; Foundation, and the Lido DAO. We have also given out a few million USD in OSS & research grants including grants to TinyML Foundation, AI in education, research and open source projects.

We actively invest in decentralized and distributed AI, (multi-) agentic systems. cyber•Fund organized dAGI Summit Bangkok, dAGI House Hackathon at EthCC in 2024 with 47 competing for more than $100k in prizes.

We believe that traditional economies are bound by human productivity and inefficiencies due to coordination overheads. Complex systems favor monopolistic control — hierarchies arise and inevitably concentrate power and wealth.

Our 2025 thesis on Decentralized AI can be found here.

Delphi Labs' mission is to make crypto happen better and faster. We leverage hands-on experience with leading crypto protocols including AAVE, Legion and Synthetix to help entrepreneurs go from zero to one. When we accelerate projects, we become an extension of the executive team. Utilising our experience in investing (with Delphi Ventures), research (with Delphi Digital) and specialist knowledge from each member of the Labs team to accelerate early-stage projects.

This is our 3rd Delphi Labs accelerator cohort, and the 2nd focused exclusively on crypto x AI. Cohort #2 launched in partnership with NEAR Foundation in Q4 ‘24 with >100 applications from which we selected 8 stand-out teams. This was a massive success, with >$20m raised by these teams during or right after the accelerator program from angels and tier 1 venture funds including ai16z crypto, сyber•Fund, Delphi Ventures among others.

The 8 teams we ultimately invited into the accelerator fell into 4 categories: 3 teams focused on bringing private data into AI training sets; 3 focused on AI agents/automations; 1 focused on decentralized browsing; 1 focused on DePin and edge compute. You can find out more about each one of these and how we helped them here.

We believe the AI industry will shift from a few dominant "God-models" to millions of specialized models optimized for specific uses. Crypto provides the ideal infrastructure for this future through its decentralized coordination, permissionless APIs, and censorship resistance, enabling a modular ecosystem of AI "legos" that delivers better solutions for developers and users. Our full thesis on crypto x AI, ‘a Distributed Rebellion’.

**Previous Partners & Sponsors**

our 3rd accelerator

This is our 3rd accelerator cohort and the 2nd one focused solely on crypto x AI.

over $20 million

with these teams raising over $20 million during or immediately after the accelerator program from angel investors and top-tier venture funds, including a16z crypto, cyber•Fund, Delphi Ventures, and beyond.

over 100 applications

received, from which we chose 8 outstanding teams.

**Reviews**

Opened so many doors

Most accelerator or incubator programs are useless - fortunately Delphi Labs is the rare exception. They have made so many introductions and opened so many doors for us, the kind of value-add that most programs claim to provide but never follow through on. They helped us go from 0 to 1 in a tough vertical: regulated crypto products, and remain supporting with brainstorming, strategizing, product feedback, introductions, and more. Working with Delphi Labs has been a big part of our success and I'd recommend teams work with them if given the opportunity.

Matty

Co-Founder

One handshake away from every investor

Delphi Labs is extremely up to date with the current market requirements to ship successful product. This allows them to give projects unbiased advice and direct their focus on most important milestones. Having Delphi as your advisor not only gives you access to tremendous knowledge but also positions you one handshake away from every relevant project and investor in the space.

Michael

Founder

They go for quality, not scale

Delphi Labs and cyber•Fund has an elite corps of deeply experienced talent that, frankly, cannot be acquired by an early-stage project on the open market (through any mix of advisory deals, independent contractors, angel investors, etc.)—because anyone with that rare mix of special qualities has already 'made it' and is no longer a gun for hire. They go for quality, not scale—thus when they choose to work with a project, it's out of deep conviction after thorough due diligence and internal debate, & you can be sure they are all-in and you will have their full attention. They get crypto, they get AI, they have experience as founders, traders, VCs, and mechanism designers—a really rare mix of high-level strategic acumen combined with nuts-and-bolts product experience. In addition, their network is deep and their ability to help make deals is close to unparalleled.

Gabriel Shapiro

Founder

It was a top-notch experience

If there is one takeaway about working with Delphi: it is that they truly support founders and teams. They are second to none in building with you.

Yang Tang

Co-founder

Support on a more personal level

When you are choosing partners, investors or an accelerator, it almost always comes down to specific people that you will be working with. Delphi Labs program expanded beyond being a formal structured set of learning outcomes to continuous advice and support on a more personal level. The team was dedicated to helping us well after the original timeframe, providing valuable insights and connections across the space.

IvanKo

Physicist and founder

A game-changer for us

They helped us nail our fundraising, fine-tune our marketing, and map out a solid product roadmap. Their deep Web3 know-how and killer network connected us with the right investors, partners, and advisors, giving us a huge boost. Beyond the strategy, they’ve been a supportive partner every step of the way. Big thanks to Delphi Labs for being such a key part of our journey!

Bob Xu

Founder

**Requests for Startups**

As inspiration for applicants we have listed several ideas and verticals we are interested in. However our interest covers the entire width of the AI x crypto vertical and we are open to any idea that falls into this category.

>>> Show All Requests <<<

>>> All Requests <<<

Distributed Compute Platforms

Build trustless, permissionless alternatives to cloud providers. Focus on communication‐efficient, verifiable, resilient systems using diverse infrastructure—from consumer hardware to specialized accelerators.

Incentivized Data Ecosystems

Launch networks that reward high-quality data creation and curation across multiple modalities—including synthetic data—to fuel continuous model improvement and automated RL.

Community-Driven AI Models

Create platforms for decentralized, continuously pre-trained and fine-tuned models with transparent, fair compensation, on‐chain royalties, and innovative crowdfunding mechanisms.

Agentic Economy & Governance

Pioneer marketplaces for AI tools and capabilities—supporting human‐in‐the‐loop as needed—with smart contracts, financial primitives, and governance mechanisms tailored for autonomous agents.

Market Mechanisms & AI Incentives

Develop protocols that empower decentralized reinforcement learning and continuous training. Enable revenue sharing, lending markets, and insurance to drive model improvement.

Security & Trust Infrastructure

Innovate robust cybersecurity measures to defend against model attacks, watermark theft, and data poisoning, ensuring safe deployment of decentralized AI solutions.

Multi-Agent Orchestration & Marketplaces

Design dynamic systems where autonomous AI agents coordinate, enter contracts, communicate, and trade services. Build orchestration tools, permissions, self‐sovereign agents, and budget management solutions that enable seamless agent collaboration.

Decentralized Evaluation Frameworks

Develop protocols that empower decentralized reinforcement learning and continuous training. Enable revenue sharing, lending markets, and insurance to drive model improvement.

Decentralized Inference-Time Compute

Build platforms for inference-time compute that leverage distributed, verifiable networks. Enable efficient, secure chain-of-thought reasoning on-demand.

AI-Driven Gaming & Personalized Content

Develop generative games where AI creates content guided by community choices. Build platforms for personalized media—films, songs, podcasts—using AI-driven recommendations.

Memory & Self-Sovereign Agents

Create on-chain memory systems that let users control and share context securely. Enhance AI personalization and multi-agent collaboration with portable, self-sovereign memory.

Fine-Tuning Marketplaces

Build platforms for on-demand fine-tuning of open models. Enable monetization through royalties for specialized model adaptations.

Additional information about Delphi Labs's and cyber•Fund's investment theses is available via the links below.

>>> cyber•Fund Thesis <<<

>>> Delphi Labs Thesis <<<

**FAQ**

What stage of projects are you looking for in this accelerator?

We generally prefer projects in the early stages. This can be anything from just a founding team with a great idea to a more built out team with a working product that's ready to go to market. Most important is finding "accelerator-project fit" which means we want teams that will benefit greatly from the program.

‍

What if we already have investors?

You're still eligible to apply and we'll take each submission on a case-by-case basis. Having some early angel or pre-seed investors isn't necessarily a problem, but one core value add from the program will be help with fundraising and connecting teams with investors so there should be some appetite for taking on future investment.

‍

Do we have to give up any equity or tokens for participating?

No. There is no requirement to allocate any equity or tokens for participating in the program.

‍

Will we receive any funding or compensation for participating?

The 8-week program is primarily remote-based and therefore should not incur any incremental costs for participation. We do anticipate 1 or more in-person events as part of the program and will discuss potential cost subsidies with the teams to optimize attendance. Beyond that, there is no specific monetary compensation for participating.

‍

Is there a requirement to use specific technology or blockchain as part of our product?

No. We believe each team should have maximum flexibility to design their product to best meet the needs of their users. Throughout the program we may feature guest speakers from an existing ecosystem or project who share details on their offerings, but the technology choices will be left up to the team.

‍

What happens after the accelerator ends?

Top-performing teams may receive follow-on investment of up to $500,000 from Delphi Labs/cyber•Fund, in addition to ongoing advisory if there’s a fit from both sides. Additionally, the Demo Day provides exposure to Tier 1 VCs, and our network remains available to alumni teams.

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How does the selection process work?

After the application period closes on March 26, our team reviews all applications based on team capability, market opportunity, and potential impact. Selected teams will go through additional interviews before final decisions are made by March 31.

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How much of our project details should we share in the application?

Be as detailed as possible about your strategy, technical approach, market opportunity, and team capabilities. All applications are kept confidential, and we're happy to sign an NDA if required. The more information you provide, the better we can evaluate your potential fit for the program.

## **dAGI Accelerator**

**The program**

Thesis

Benefits

Format of the program

This is an intensive program for those who are committed to moving their project toward real world deployment:

Requirements for teams

**Timeline**

**Organizers**

**Previous Partners & Sponsors**

our 3rd accelerator

over $20 million

over 100 applications

**Reviews**

Opened so many doors

One handshake away from every investor

They go for quality, not scale

It was a top-notch experience

Support on a more personal level

A game-changer for us

**Requests for Startups**

Distributed Compute Platforms

Incentivized Data Ecosystems

Community-Driven AI Models

Agentic Economy & Governance

Market Mechanisms & AI Incentives

Security & Trust Infrastructure

Multi-Agent Orchestration & Marketplaces

Decentralized Evaluation Frameworks

Decentralized Inference-Time Compute

AI-Driven Gaming & Personalized Content

Memory & Self-Sovereign Agents

Fine-Tuning Marketplaces

**FAQ**

What stage of projects are you looking for in this accelerator?

What if we already have investors?

Do we have to give up any equity or tokens for participating?

Will we receive any funding or compensation for participating?

Is there a requirement to use specific technology or blockchain as part of our product?

What happens after the accelerator ends?

How does the selection process work?

How much of our project details should we share in the application?

**dAGI Accelerator**

Moongate

AI Tools Network

## dAGI Accelerator

The program

Timeline

Organizers

Previous Partners & Sponsors

Reviews

Requests for Startups

FAQ

dAGI Accelerator