Quick take:
- The fundraising also attracted participation from Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group.
- Launched in July as an invite-only service, Surf was made open to the public in September and has since attracted more than 300,000 users, who generated over a million research reports.
- The company claims to have already generated $2 million in revenue from subscription fees and targets to reach $10 million by the end of 2026.
Surf, an AI startup specializing in crypto services, has raised $15 million in a funding round led by Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group.
Launched in July 2025 as an invite-only service, Surf offers specialized search services focused on the crypto industry. According to co-founder and CEO Ryan Li, Surf is something the founders were building for themselves that the market fell in love with, Fortune reported.
“I think Surf is the best model for crypto, and we want to make sure people trust Surf instead of relying on hallucinations from other models.”
Unlike ChatGPT, Perplexity AI, and Grok, which offer more “generalized answers,” Surf is taylormade for the crypto industry, providing more detail and depth in research reports.
“ChatGPT is a really good generalist, but it doesn’t know the crypto industry enough,” Li said. “Surf is like that expert that worked in the industry for a long time by us training the model just for crypto.”
Surf was made open to the public in September and has since attracted more than 300,000 users, who generated over a million research reports, Li said.
The company also claims to have already generated $2 million in revenue from subscription fees and targets to reach $10 million by the end of 2026.
Explaining how Surf works in a blog post on Wednesday, the company wrote: “Surf was built around a simple thesis: crypto is too complex and unique for general-purpose AI. LLMs are powerful, but they hallucinate frequently and struggle with specialized workflows.”
The platform is designed to feel less like a chatbot and more like having a personal crypto analyst on call, the company said.
Stay on top of things:
Subscribe to our newsletter using this link – we won’t spam!
