Why investors should look for a blend of AI and blockchain in startups

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Proper utilization of future technology to solve real-world problems will separate the whales from the minnows in the startup world. The latest and greatest developments in tech, including blockchain and AI, can empower businesses with faster, better, safer, cheaper, and more trustworthy services for customers. The trick is to combine these technologies to fully take advantage of their benefits.

The Block Dojo is a global venture builder with a special focus on powering businesses with BSV blockchain and other future technologies. Since its inception, the Block Dojo has invested in over 250 blockchain startups and collectively raised over 12 million for the founders in 2023.

“We help founders and startups to ensure that they’re solving real-world problems,” shared Alex Ball, Block Dojo’s Global Program Director.

“Once they’ve validated that, then they can start looking at what technologies they’re going to use and apply whether that be blockchain, whether that be AI, that’s going to then help to provide that solution that solves that validated problem,” he said.

While Block Dojo defines itself as an incubator in the blockchain space, a number of the startups in its program are leading by using AI, while blockchain does its job in the background. The first example of one of these startups is Unikorrn, an AI-powered risk-mitigating meeting management platform.

“We use AI to create agendas based on your meeting type to help with best practice, as well as prompts that help to assess the productivity and how well your meetings are going, helps the businesses to suggest what they should be talking about, what they can improve on,” Unikorrn CEO Ony Nweze told CoinGeek.

“And then the most important aspect is we use blockchain to help increase that level of security and data protection, which is our star and something none of our competitors are doing right now,” she revealed.

Another example is SeeSaw, a platform that swaps obstructive paywalls for engaging games, driving traffic, and ad revenues for content publishers.

“We’re helping media to get over this paywall cannibalization of their own industry, and we saw a chance to get the data we need to train our AI algorithm, which we basically want to change the future of digital advertising,” said Danny Black, co-founder of SeeSaw.

“The way we decided we could get there is to utilize some of the blockchain technology that’s at our fingertips to safely store this data,” he added.

debbi.io is yet another example of a Block Dojo startup that is leading with AI.

“debbi.io is an AI-powered tool that allows for near real time data analysis for diversity, equity and inclusion metrics,” shared debbi.io’s CEO Karolina Janicka.

“We use the AI in order to analyze vast amounts of data in real time. So just as you can go on ChatGPT, ask it a question and it will reply within seconds, you would be able to upload your data and within seconds see the results of it,” she explained.

“We’re not quite using blockchain yet, but we are exploring the opportunity to use it for encrypted data and ensuring that all that sensitive information that we’re gathering is really protected and well served so that businesses feel secure and their employees feel secure as well,” Janicka added.

In addition to these three startups, four more for a total of seven presented to a room of investors on the eve of July 25 in London at the Block Dojo Cohort 8 Showcase. The evening included short pitches from each startup, plus an opportunity for them to demo their projects to interested investors and peers.

Out of the seven pitches, five highlighted the AI element in their projects, a signal that AI is king when it comes to capturing investors’ attention. However, investors must understand that AI needs blockchain.

“Investors are loving AI right now, but it’s a black box. What’s going on? It’s opaque. You don’t understand what’s happening to your data,” said Ball.

“So the purpose of then marrying that up with blockchain is that now all of a sudden that data is open, it’s transparent, it can be interrogated,” he said.

“And I think that this is the important part of it for any investor that is going to be invested in companies that are using AI, they need to be looking for companies that are also leveraging blockchain as well,” Ball advised.

While AI has overtaken blockchain as one of the world’s most popular buzzwords, for AI to work properly, it must integrate with an enterprise blockchain system such as BSV blockchain to ensure the quality of data input into AI algorithms.

The Block Dojo is perfectly positioned to equip hungry entrepreneurs with this secret sauce, which in turn will clue investors to pay attention to startups that integrate AI with blockchain because they are one giant leap ahead of the others.

In order for artificial intelligence (AI) to work right within the law and thrive in the face of growing challenges, it needs to integrate an enterprise blockchain system that ensures data input quality and ownership—allowing it to keep data safe while also guaranteeing the immutability of data. Check out CoinGeek’s coverage on this emerging tech to learn more why Enterprise blockchain will be the backbone of AI.

Watch: Understanding the dynamics of blockchain & AI