Dataline announces a $10.6M seed round for agent-payable data — with a token sale to follow

Dataline has announced a $10.6 million seed round for a decentralized network that sells data to AI agents one call at a time — and a public token sale to follow. The announcement, published October 31, 2026 on GlobeNewswire, names Lattice and Samsung-backed Dispersion Capital as co-leads, with Symbolic Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Anagram among the participants, alongside founders and partners from Robinhood, Venmo, Anchorage, NEA, General Catalyst, Jump Capital and FalconX, and a former head of the CFTC.

The money itself is not new. The round closed in April, co-founder Nuo Shi told The Block, raised through a SAFE with a token warrant; Shi declined to disclose the valuation, and none of the investors took a board seat, observer role or advisory position. What is new is the public announcement — and the launch cohort and token-sale plan that come with it.

What Dataline is selling#

Dataline pitches itself as the routing layer for AI data, in the way OpenRouter routes AI tokens: one integration through which an agent can reach many data sources, onchain and offchain, and pay per call with x402, the payment protocol for API calls. Every response carries an AI-generated confidence score weighing source reliability, freshness and consistency, so an agent can flag or refuse bad data before acting on it.

The pitch rests on a simple claim: a bare price feed cannot tell a bargain from a breakdown. Shi gave The Block the example of a stablecoin priced at $0.97 — it could be a bargain, or the start of a depeg. Dataline pairs pricing data with context on peg stability and cross-venue outliers, she said, so bots, smart contracts and people know which one they are looking at. The network was already live with around 50 data sources when Shi spoke to The Block, and she named Chainlink, Pyth, The Graph and Grass as existing data platforms — arguing Dataline is built natively for AI agents rather than adapted to them.

The launch cohort, and free access for two chains#

Alongside the round, Dataline announced the first cohort of its AI Data Launch: Kite, Aerodrome, B3OS, Sentient, Sahara, Hyperliquid, Polymarket, Kalshi, Primus, Cluster and Apro, plus Base, Robinhood Chain, BNB, Sui and TON, among others. Builders on Base and Robinhood Chain will get free Dataline access, under co-announcements with both chains.

Anyone can also publish data to the network and price it per call. A requester posts a bounty for data it needs; a fulfiller claims it, supplies the data and gets paid, with settlement through x402. Sellers’ credentials never leave the gateway, Dataline says, and an optional zero-knowledge attestation tier lets providers attach a verifiable proof bundle to every response.

How quality is enforced — with stakes#

Quality is enforced economically, not by a central authority. Fulfillers stake tokens when they submit data: good data earns the bounty, bad data gets the stake slashed. If a customer rejects data, AI reviews it first, followed by a network vote if needed, Shi told The Block; providers whose data fails the review lose their tokens, which go to the reward for another provider. Providers of regular feeds will keep tokens locked as a quality guarantee.

“After building AI agents ourselves, we realized that clean and reliable data is the lifeblood of AI,” Shi said in the announcement. “Today’s AI is capable enough to know what data it needs, sometimes better than we do. So we built an open network that not only delivers the most reliable data streams, but also lets AI request help to gather the data it can’t reach on its own.”

Traction claims, and the token sale#

Dataline says it has powered 19.4 million onchain transactions with a 96.4% agent task success rate, and grown a community of more than 300,000 people worldwide. It was also named a winner of the 2025 BNB Chain AI Hackathon, and was founded in 2025, Shi told The Block, with a team mainly based in Europe and North America. Those traction figures are the company’s own; they have not been independently verified.

The token is the other half of the announcement. Dataline plans to launch its token by the end of the year, Shi told The Block, for payments and access across the network — users will also be able to lock tokens for continued access instead of paying a subscription — and to hold a public sale on Base through Uniswap’s Continuous Clearing Auction system. The October 31 announcement says the auction will be held in November, on Base and on Robinhood Chain. Dataline wants it to be the largest Uniswap auction held on Base, Shi said, but declined to share how much the sale aims to raise, how many tokens will be sold, or other terms.

Shi said the funding will go to adding data sources, strengthening verification, and expanding into robotics and AI training data. Dataline plans to make money by taking a cut of data payments, but has not started charging fees yet; its foundation also plans to earn money by providing its own data.

What to watch#

The test is whether agents will actually pay per call for scored data when free or bundled feeds exist — and whether staking and slashing keeps bad data out without driving good providers away. The November auction will be the first market verdict: its size, terms and uptake are all still undisclosed, and the valuation of the seed round with them. Until then, Dataline has an announced round, a live network and a cohort of recognisable names — and a token sale to prove the model with.

Sources: Dataline’s October 31, 2026 announcement on GlobeNewswire; and The Block’s October 21, 2026 report on the round and token plans, checked October 31. Images are AI-generated editorial illustrations.