Carv, a data layer platform that enables Web3 gaming, AI companies, and gamers to control and monetize their data, has raised $10 million in a Series A round led by Tribe Capital and IOSG Ventures.
Carv's new round comes about five months after it received a strategic investment led by HashKey Capital. The company has not disclosed its valuation or the total amount of funding raised so far. In 2022, Carv was valued at around $40 million when it raised a seed round led by Vertex Ventures, Temasek's VC arm.
Carv will initially focus on two key industries: gaming and AI, where it believes the biggest opportunity lies in helping users take control and monetize their data. Users can choose to provide their data to Carv's corporate customers in a privacy-preserving and compliant manner, so businesses can use it for things like training their AI models and market research.
“User data has driven incredible economic growth, but individuals don't share in the value created when they leverage their information to build multibillion-dollar businesses,” Carv co-founder Victor Yu, chief operating officer (COO), told TechCrunch.
Carv offers three solutions. The CARV protocol is a modular data layer with cross-chain connections that connect Web2 identities to Web3 tokens. CARV Play, a cross-platform authentication system and game distribution platform. CARV's AI agent, CARA, is a personalized gaming assistant that integrates with Web3 wallets and can recommend games, activities, and projects.
“Carv differentiates itself by putting data ownership and monetization rights in the hands of users. The revenue generated from leveraging users’ data is shared between the data creators and themselves. ,” Yu said. “Additionally, we created a unified user identity standard (ERC-7231) that bridges Web2 and Web3, enabling seamless data portability for today's siled solutions.”
Carv has been profitable since December 2023 and generates more than $1 million in monthly recurring revenue, Yu said, adding that the company is also seeing significant month-over-month growth.
The company currently has 2.5 million registered users and more than 350 integrated gaming and AI corporate partners.
Carv plans to use the new funding to enhance the design of the CARV protocol to ensure scalability and support a wider range of use cases. We are also launching CARV Link to improve on-chain identity and data authentication, and CARV Database to manage different types of user data.
Arweave, Consensys (developer of MetaMask and Linea), Draper Dragon, Fenbushi Capital, LiquidX, MARBLEX, (the web3 division of Korean gaming company Netmarble), No Limit Holdings, and OKX Ventures also participated in the Series A round.