Why We Invest in Anchain.ai

Huican Zhu, Ph.D, General Partner, Amino Capital

Founded in 2018, Anchain.ai is a San Francisco-based company that provids blockchain security and regulatory compliance solutions to secure leading crypto exchanges, protocols, and DeFi worldwide for $81 Billion in daily transaction volume. It serves clients in over 10 countries across the financial and enterprise industry, blockchain Virtual Asset Service Providers (VASP), public sector companies and governments.

Amino Capital has always been very interested in crypto industry. We have invested in high profile startups in their early days like DFINITY, OMG, and a few others. Cryptos, in its early stage as of now, still have security issues. It is decentralized, but it does not mean that there is no auditing or regulations. We therefore wanted to invest in company that can help the crypto market grow healthily. I had a breakfast with the founder of Anchain AI, learned about the business, and thought it was a good fit for us.

The investment happened about 2 and a half years ago. We were their first money, and added more in the following rounds.

The company’s mission is aligned with our investment theme of big data. As security and auditing are likely to be a concern for the government, crypto data analytics could be a solution. Another reason is that we really like to founding team. Dr. Victor Fang, the founder and CEO, has a PhD in computer science; he is very energetic, and has good knowledge in data processing as well as entrepreneurship. He was previously leading data science team at FireEye Mandiant, and AI advocate for cyber security industry.

Smart contract, which many crypto transactions rely on, has a lot of security issues. They handle real money, but the bugs in their code could be exploited for theft. While there are other companies doing data analysis and smart contract auditing, Anchain has real-time security check. They do real-time tracking based on the dynamic change of the environment, not just auditing. Their ability to react to any event is an advantage other companies do not have.

Anchain also does security auditing. The SEC just signed a contract with Anchain.ai for their industry leading smart contract security analytics SaaS product that will help regulate DeFi, NFT, stablecoin and more.

Right now the industry is still in its infancy. There are a lot of new ideas coming out. People are still thinking of ways for cryptos to support businesses. Bitcoin, for instance, is treated as digital gold, but is not growing any real business. In the future I think crypto currency will need to have a better relationship with the government, complying to government rules in areas such as anti-money laundering. Perhaps some startups will provide centralized services on this decentralized platform. I think Anchain will play a key role in this process, and will be an essential requirement for any business to be navigate through the crypto industry.

Edited by Peter Shi, NYU Stern