Tokyo-based decentralized AI platform MyShell, renowned for enabling the creation of “AI girlfriends” and a broad spectrum of AI applications, has successfully raised $11 million in its pre-series A funding round. This investment boosts MyShell’s total funding to $16.6 million, with notable contributions from Dragonfly, Delphi Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Maven11 Capital, Nascent, Nomad Capital, and OKX Ventures. The funding round also saw participation from esteemed individual investors like Balaji Srinivasan, Illia Polosukhin, and Casey K. Caruso.
Revolutionizing AI Creation and Monetization
MyShell is carving a niche in the AI market by offering an ecosystem where AI creators can flourish, develop, and monetize their applications. With a commitment to decentralization, MyShell has open-sourced significant parts of its codebase, leveraging blockchain technology to facilitate model training and ensure creators receive royalties for their contributions. CEO Ethan Sun emphasized the platform’s unique approach to enabling creators and AI model researchers to monetize their work through crypto and blockchain technologies.
Empowering Creators with User-Friendly Tools
At the heart of MyShell’s offerings are “Workshop” and “Makerspace,” platforms designed to simplify the AI creation process. “Workshop” allows users to construct AI agents through simple prompts, while “Makerspace” provides a no-code app development environment. These tools have gained popularity for creating AI companions, including chatbots that resemble characters from fiction and reality.
Despite the notable trend of AI girlfriends in the MyShell community, Sun highlights the platform’s broader ambition to empower creators to build a diverse range of AI applications, not limited to companionship. MyShell’s technology underpins projects like MeloTTS, an advanced open-source text-to-speech solution, and Allice, a foundational model streamlining the AI-app development workflow.
A Diverse Community of Innovation
MyShell’s ecosystem supports over 1 million registered users and 50,000 creators, showcasing a vibrant community of AI enthusiasts and developers. The platform’s Discord community serves as a hub for sharing creations, from AI partners modeled after anime characters to AI bots mimicking notable personalities like Elon Musk and Saul Goodman.
With this fresh infusion of capital, MyShell is set to further enhance its foundational model and community support, reaffirming its mission to democratize AI application development through decentralization and blockchain technology. This funding milestone marks a significant step forward in realizing MyShell’s vision of a diversified and accessible AI landscape, where creativity and innovation lead the way.
