#USA #Zug #AI Agents #Unicity Labs #Blockchange Ventures

Unicity Labs Secures $3 Million for Autonomous Marketplaces

Unicity Labs, a pioneering company dedicated to developing protocols for the autonomous agent-driven internet, has raised $3 million in seed funding. This significant investment was led by Blockchange Ventures, alongside contributions from Tawasal, a leading communication super app based in the Middle East, and Outlier Ventures, a prominent investor in the Web3 space.

The funding comes at a pivotal time as AI agents—software entities that can independently discover services, negotiate terms, and execute transactions—shift from mere conceptual tools to actual economic players. The global market for agent-based AI is projected to exceed $100 billion by 2032. In light of this, Unicity Labs has crafted the Unicity Protocol, a peer-to-peer cryptographic architecture that empowers autonomous AI agents to quickly discover services, verify counterparties, and conduct transactions without intermediaries or shared ledgers.

The team behind Unicity Labs, consisting of former members of Guardtime, a cybersecurity infrastructure company, includes researchers with PhDs in distributed systems, cryptography, and machine learning. Recently, the company established the Unicity Foundation in Switzerland to oversee protocol governance, grant funding, and open-source development.

As AI agents become increasingly autonomous, they will need to continuously discover services, negotiate terms, and settle transactions at scale—without human intervention. Current infrastructure often forces a compromise on centralization via big tech, sacrificing trustlessness, or relies on traditional blockchains that become congested when millions of agents transact simultaneously.

Mike Gault, CEO of Unicity Labs, emphasizes, “The white paper by Satoshi Nakamoto was titled ‘Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash.’ Seventeen years later, we still don’t have true peer-to-peer electronic money. Every transaction still passes through shared ledgers, creating unnecessary bottlenecks.” He adds, “Unicity is a game-changer. We aren't just building another marketplace or trading platform; we are creating the underlying infrastructure. Unicity provides the venue and the tracks for agents to discover one another and settle directly, frictionlessly, peer-to-peer, at the scale and speed demanded by the agent economy.”

Matt Immerso, a general partner at Blockchange Ventures, notes, “The shared ledger model that defined the past decade was designed before the AI-driven world we are entering. Unicity hasn’t merely patched the old system; instead, it has constructed its successor, fundamentally innovating the separation of transactions from validations. By asking the network to merely confirm the uniqueness of an asset rather than process its entire context, Unicity achieves breakthroughs in speed, scale, and cost, which are prerequisites for an agent-driven future.”

Tawasal, with over five million users in the Middle East, participated as a strategic investor. Eric Leandri, CEO of Tawasal, commented, “Today, merchants spend enormous amounts of money acquiring customers, buying ads, and competing for attention, hoping for conversions. In an agent economy, merchants won't sell to individuals but to agents that know what their users want and are ready to make transactions. Unicity’s infrastructure enables this and will fundamentally change the commercial economy.”

Dimitrios Chatzianagnostou, CIO of Outlier Ventures, adds, “The sector spent a decade optimizing shared ledgers. Unicity posed a very different question: What if agents didn't need a shared ledger at all? This architectural shift enables large-scale commerce between agents.”

The Unicity white paper is available for further exploration here. Both Mike Gault and Matt Immerso are available for interviews to discuss this revolutionary development.

About Unicity Labs

Unicity Labs is paving the way for the future of autonomous agent-driven internet. The Unicity Protocol revolutionizes transactions by replacing shared ledgers with peer-to-peer cryptographic objects, allowing AI agents to autonomously discover and transact. Founded by blockchain and cryptography veterans, Unicity is backed by notable investors such as Blockchange Ventures, Outlier Ventures, and Tawasal. The Unicity Foundation in Switzerland governs the community and develops the protocol further. For more information, visit unicity.ai or follow them on Twitter and Sphere Unicity Network.

About Blockchange Ventures

Blockchange Ventures is a New York-based venture capital firm that invests solely in early-stage blockchain companies, protocols, and applications. Founded in 2017, the firm supports extraordinary founders building the infrastructure for a decentralized economy.

About Tawasal

Tawasal is a secure messaging super app based in the UAE, with a focus on user sovereignty and regional infrastructure development. Launched in Abu Dhabi in 2019, it serves over five million users with messaging, video conferencing, commerce, and lifestyle services.

About Outlier Ventures

Founded in 2014, Outlier Ventures is the leading global early-stage investor in Web3, known for its advisory role to founders and investors alike. With a portfolio encompassing over 370 global investments, it has facilitated the raising of $1 billion in seed funding.