Nasdaq-listed OceanPal Inc. has raised $120 million through a private investment in public equity deal to launch SovereignAI, a new subsidiary focused on commercializing the NEAR Protocol and developing AI infrastructure.
According to a Tuesday announcement, SovereignAI will implement a crypto treasury strategy, with plans to acquire up to 10% of the NEAR (NEAR) token supply. The move, developed in partnership with the NEAR Foundation, makes OceanPal a public vehicle for exposure to the crypto protocol’s native token.
OceapPal said the partnership with the NEAR Foundation is based on a shared vision of “universal AI sovereignty.”
Launched in 2020, NEAR is a layer-1 blockchain supporting AI applications, allowing AI agents to interact, manage assets and operate securely across networks, according to the project’s website.
The announcement coincides with a leadership shift at OceanPal, which appointed former State Street executive Sal Ternullo as co-CEO and David Schwed, previously with BNY Mellon, Galaxy and Robinhood, as chief operating officer.
Meanwhile, NEAR Foundation co-founder and CEO Illia Polosukhin will join the SovereignAI advisory board alongside Richard Muirhead of Fabric Ventures and Lukasz Kaiser of OpenAI, among others.
Related: OpenAI restructures as public benefit corporation, Microsoft secures 27% stake
The rise of AI agents in crypto
AI agents — autonomous systems that can perceive, decide and act without human input — are increasingly merging with crypto, using blockchain networks to manage assets, verify actions and operate as self-governing economic participants.
In September, John D’Agostino, the head of institutional strategy at Coinbase, told CNBC’s Squawk Box that cryptocurrency is needed for AI agents to operate effectively in financial markets.
The same month, Cloudflare, a global cloud infrastructure company, announced plans to launch a new stablecoin called NET Dollar to support instant transactions triggered by AI agents.
Recent data from Dune Analytics revealed that Coinbase’s AI-ready payments protocol, launched in May to let autonomous agents send and receive stablecoins online, had seen transaction activity surge over 10,000% in the past month.
Those numbers came after two Coinbase developers said in August that AI agents are “about to become Ethereum’s biggest power users.”
Magazine: You should ‘go and build’ your own AI agent: Jesse Pollak, X Hall of Flame
