The AI industry started raising an insane amount of money around 2016–2017, but it has really been trending since ChatGPT became public 5–6 years later.
Startups were raising at crazy high valuations because demand was way higher than supply.
The robotics industry is basically what the AI industry was 10 years ago. Infinite demand, with very, very low supply. Companies are raising at billion-dollar valuations for products that aren’t even working, because VCs are betting on the next "Nvidia of robotics." The current 500M–1B startup could be worth 1T tomorrow.
But robotics and crypto are two industries that can’t really connect:
- robotics is very, very expensive, 50–100M of funding is usually necessary to start building,
- robotics salaries are insanely high. I would say a very good dev gets paid at least $200–300K yearly, while the crypto industry is willing to pay a maximum of $70–80K, so their interests are very low,
- retention time is very low. Shipping takes years, most startups fail, and unfortunately failure isn’t something Web3 wants to hear (disillusioned industry).
CT is always late, and it’s only when robots start replacing humans that people will really begin digging into the industry, while most robotics startups will already be 20–30x the valuation they are today.
Only a few teams are taking the risk of associating themselves with this "baby" narrative.
$CODEC, for example, is building real-time execution infrastructure for AI agents and robotics (met the founder IRL, very solid, plus Theo (
@0xdetweiler) is advising them).
But have you ever seen a crypto project building physical robots?
No, it’s too expensive and complicated.
But for the past two months I’ve been monitoring Small Thing (
@the_small_thing) as THE potential big winner (it was basically my only holding on Fomo before I added 50k$).
What are they building?
Autonomous, physical robots that are cleaning the oceans. IDGAF about ecology, but I care about the project’s upside.
- governments/politics: leftist cities or countries are willing to clean the sea. These kinds of contracts are usually long-term (10–20 years) because they’re hard to cancel. Good thing, Small Thing is officially backed by a city :
x.com/the_small_thing/status…
- They should release/show their final product in a few days or weeks. If they do and don’t disappoint, they’ll officially be the first crypto project building physical robots. (Yes, the 1st one)
- Token utilities haven’t been revealed yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if the token allows discounts to buy the robots or something similar, which means cities or governments might buy the token. (you get it ? ^^)
- Robotics is not trending yet, so the potential for it to become the next meta is at its peak.
$CODEC went over 40M while people didn’t even understand what it was doing, they were just bidding the narrative.
- The project is legit. They onboarded very strong advisors and are teasing more (Xris (
@xrisborg) from SwissBorg, Mo Ezeldin (
@Mo_Ezz14) from Animoca Brands, and Rodolphe Steffan (
@RodolpheSteffan) a well-known French trader).
- Virtuals (
@virtuals_io) needs a runner, and what’s better than pushing a whole new narrative? They’re already trying to integrate robotics (for example with Xmaquina (
@xmaquina )).
Mark my words, I won’t sell a single token I bought on FOMO before 50M FDV. 20x from here.
After digging into the whole thing and fully understanding the vision, I reached out to Jerome Mercier (
@djedjex) the founder, and asked if I could advise them and help. I’m now officially an advisor. I’d rather be transparent about this than have people accuse me of shilling my own project or whatever.
Get your own conviction, study the meta, don’t follow me blindly on this, and believe in something.
dexscreener.com/base/0x01e15…