Ryan Li has long been steeped in the worlds of both AI and crypto. He started working with AI about ten years ago as an undergrad at UC Berkeley and has since built two crypto startups. That experience has led him to conclude that popular AI platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity give rise to far too many hallucinations about crypto—and that those errors can cost traders millions, if not billions, of dollars. That’s why he cofounded Surf, an AI platform specialized for the world of crypto.
On Wednesday, his startup announced that it raised $15 million from Pantera Capital, with participation from Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group. Li, the startup’s CEO, did not disclose the company’s valuation in an interview with Fortune.
“Surf was something that we wanted to build for ourselves, and it turns out the market loves it,” he said. “I think Surf is the best model for crypto, and we want to make sure people trust Surf instead of relying on hallucinations from other models.”
The product launched as an invite-only service in July before opening to the general public in September. It has more than 300,000 people using the platform and has generated more than a million search results, according to the company. Li says that the platform can answer a spectrum of questions about crypto, from the most basic to the most technical concepts. He says that 80% of the platform’s users are regular people who don’t work in crypto, and the remaining 20% are from venture capital firms, exchanges, and other crypto-affiliated companies.
The startup says that it has a couple of million dollars in revenue and hopes to reach $10 million by the end of 2026. Surf generates revenue by charging a subscription fee, with users paying $15 to $399 per month on different tiers of the service. People can access a free version in which they can only ask a few questions per day. The company currently has just under 30 employees.
Li views his startup’s competition as mainstream AI models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Grok. The company says that its platform performs four times better than ChatGPT and Grok on crypto tasks, based on benchmark testing it co-authored with Princeton University. While ChatGPT may be slightly faster, Surf had answers that were more specific to crypto and had more citations, based on a side-by-side comparison of the two platforms that Li shared with Fortune.
“ChatGPT is a really good generalist, but it doesn’t know the crypto industry enough,” Li said. “Surf is like that expert that worked in the industry for a long time by us training the model just for crypto.”
With the new funding, the startup plans to launch Surf 2.0, a more advanced model, in February 2026.
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