Crunch Lab raises $5M to scale its decentralized AI network of 10,000+ ML engineers

For years, enterprises have spent hundreds of millions chasing scarce AI talent. Crunch Lab is flipping that model. Instead of fighting over a handful of experts, the company has built a decentralized network of over 10,000 machine learning engineers and 1,200 PhDs, delivering production-grade predictions at a global scale. And investors are taking notice.

Crunch Lab, the core contributor to CrunchDAO, has raised $5 million in a strategic funding round co-led by Galaxy Ventures and Road Capital, with participation from VanEck and Multicoin. The June round brings Crunch’s total funding to $10 million, following a $3.5 million seed round in 2024.

From ADIA to MIT: Crunch Lab Taps Collective Intelligence to Beat In-House AI Teams

The backing from Galaxy Ventures, VanEck, Road Capital, and Multicoin strengthens Crunch’s push to give enterprises an alternative to building expensive in-house AI teams. Its decentralized network is already delivering measurable gains for major institutions, including the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA) Research Lab and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Crunch’s approach is proven in production, not stuck in academic papers. ADIA Lab saw a 17% improvement in cross-sectional asset pricing predictions. The Broad Institute used Crunch’s network for breakthroughs in cancer gene research through computer vision. In FX markets, the company’s Mid+One™ pricing engine—a model built through crowdsourced competition—is now live inside a global investment bank.

“AI today is constrained by hiring bottlenecks, siloed teams, and an inability to scale effectively,” said Jean Herelle, CEO of Crunch Lab and CrunchDAO. “We’ve flipped that model. Instead of competing for scarce talent, we give enterprises secure access to all of it through a decentralized network.”

Crunch takes forecasting problems and transforms them into encrypted modeling challenges called Crunches. Data scientists from around the world compete to build the best models, with rewards tied entirely to performance. The result is a constantly improving system that surfaces solutions even elite internal teams miss.

“This isn’t theoretical hype—it’s proven,” added Herelle. “When thousands of practitioners compete, you uncover solutions even the best internal teams miss.”

Investors see this as the foundation for a new layer of decentralized intelligence. “Crunch Lab is building an intelligence layer for global enterprises,” said Will Nuelle, General Partner at Galaxy Ventures. “Whether predicting asset prices, optimizing energy demand, or advancing healthcare diagnostics, CrunchDAO’s crowdsourced models unlock smarter, faster decision-making.”

Thomas Bailey of Road Capital shares that view: “We believe Crunch Lab represents one of the most compelling attempts to connect global quants with enterprises at scale. AI is a trillion-dollar market, and open protocols like Crunch are positioned to capture it.”

Crunch Lab will use the fresh capital infusion to accelerate platform development and expand into industries beyond finance and biomedical research. Earlier this year, CrunchDAO was selected for Solana Incubator’s second cohort, signaling growing momentum for its technical approach and market potential.

Crunch Lab sits at the frontier of collective intelligence, bringing together Nobel laureates, leading ML experts, and thousands of data scientists. By tapping into this global talent pool, enterprises can run real-time predictive models without giving up data security or intellectual property.