Inference Labs Raises $6.3M to Secure AI Agents Through Verifiable Inference Protocol
Hamilton, Canada, June 26th, 2025
Inference Labs has raised a total of $6.3 million to build a cryptographic trust layer for the AI agents and off-chain computation. The recent strategic investment round featured follow-on participation from DACM and Delphi Ventures alongside new investments from Arche Capital and Lvna Capital. Additionally, the round included a $1M Echo Syndicate community round led by Native Capital. These investments mark a key milestone in developing “Proof of Inference”, a zero-knowledge cryptographic protocol that enables AI models to hyperscale with decentralized off-chain resources while proving the soundness of their outputs.
Solving AI’s Core Trust Problem
As autonomous AI agents increasingly influence decisions in critical domains—healthcare, finance, governance, and more—the need for provable, tamper-resistant outputs is urgent. Inference Labs addresses this with Proof of Inference, a cryptographic mechanism that validates AI outputs using zero-knowledge proofs. This allows model operators to keep their intellectual property private while still offering verifiable services to consumers and systems that depend on their outputs.
“AI agents will soon outnumber human users online, and AI is going to be part of every decision in our lives, cryptographic trust in AI outputs is non-negotiable. Proof of Inference is our answer: privacy-preserving, provable inference at scale,” said Ron Chan, Co-Founder of Inference Labs.
Building Critical Infrastructure for Decentralized AI
Inference Labs is creating a decentralized verification architecture that allows AI computations to remain off-chain, fast, and private—while producing cryptographic zk-proofs that ensure the results are from the correct source. This architecture is designed to support use cases where trust and confidentiality must coexist, such as in enterprise, decentralized finance, and compliance-heavy environments.
In addition to building novel zero-knowledge systems, the team operates Subnet 2, the largest decentralized zkML proving cluster in the world, currently live on Bittensor. Subnet 2 has produced more than 160 million zk proofs to date and incentivizes open participation across model distillation, circuit design, and prover optimization.
Key Milestones:
- $6.3M raised to date from leading investors including DACM, Delphi, Echo (Native Captial), and Mechanism.
- Proof of Inference live on testnet
- Strategic integrations with EigenLayer, Bittensor, and Multiple Subnet Ecosystems
The protocol’s Proof of Inference system is currently live on testnet, with mainnet launch scheduled for late Q3. This timeline positions Inference Labs to capitalize on the growing demand for verifiable AI infrastructure as the sector matures.
Inference Labs has established strategic positioning alongside leading decentralized AI protocols, including EigenLayer, Bittensor, and various Subnets. This ecosystem integration enables Proof of Inference to provide verification services across multiple networks while building on proven infrastructure.
The company’s technical approach leverages optimized circuits through EZKL and builds on successful implementations such as Subnet 2, demonstrating practical application of zkML technology in production environments. Sertn is built with EZKL-optimized circuits and has demonstrated working applications in Subnet 2, showcasing real-world viability of zkML in production.
In addition to EZKL, Inference Labs has integrated and benchmarked a diverse set of leading zkML proving frameworks, including Lagrange’s DeepProve, Circom, a16z’s JOLT, and Polyhedra’s Expander. By supporting multiple proof systems and focusing on performance, interoperability, and extensibility, the team has built a modular zkML architecture that enables cryptographic verification across heterogeneous model types and compute environments. This flexibility ensures that the infrastructure remains future-proof as the zk ecosystem evolves and provides developers with access to the most efficient proving tools available today.
Market Opportunity and First-Mover Advantage
The funding round’s success, which included a sold-out Echo syndicate that closed in under one week, reflects strong investor confidence in Inference Labs’ first-mover position in zkML-based inference verification. As AI agents are projected to soon outnumber human users online, the demand for verification infrastructure is expected to grow exponentially.
The protocol addresses a fundamental challenge in the emerging AI agent economy: how to trust AI outputs without sacrificing privacy or revealing sensitive algorithms. This capability becomes increasingly valuable as AI systems handle more critical decisions across industries.
Industry Applications and Use Cases
Proof of Inference verification capabilities enable new possibilities across multiple sectors:
- Cross-Organizational Enterprise Agent2Agent Architecture
- Healthcare applications requiring verifiable AI diagnostics
- Financial services needing compliant AI decision-making
- DeFi protocols incorporating AI-driven strategies
- Content verification systems ensuring authentic AI-generated media
About Inference Labs
As decentralized AI scales, and accelerates, Inference Labs is building the cryptographic trust infrastructure to support it. Through Proof of Inference, the team enables AI agents to produce verifiable, privacy-preserving outputs—ushering in a new era of transparent, autonomous computation where machine-generated decisions can be trusted without revealing sensitive data or proprietary logic.
Useful Links:
Website: https://inferencelabs.com/
X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/inference_labs
Telegram: https://t.me/inference_labs
Discord: https://discord.gg/inferencelabs