Founded early of 2025, we are we are a pioneering force in on-chain venture capital, redefining the investment landscape with transparency and decentralization at its core. Founded from our base in Switzerland, our passion for the newly emerging industry attracted investors to build illuminance.
Illuminating the Future of
AI & Decentralization
Backing the pioneers of AI evolution and decentralized innovation through fully on-chain, community-driven investments.
About Iluminate
With a Global reach and commitment to decentralized AI defi's future, illuminance is starting their first venture with our incubated project Clara.
27 Investment
Across All Stages
We have backed 27 groundbreaking companies, spanning early-stage startups to high-growth enterprises. Our investment thesis focuses on:
AI-Powered Protocols
We fund decentralized AI frameworks that enable autonomous agents, federated learning, and blockchain-integrated machine learning, ensuring scalable, verifiable, and permissionless AI innovation without reliance on centralized control or data silos.
Decentralize Networks
Our investments support sovereign AI infrastructure, building resilient, cross-chain data networks, decentralized compute layers, and censorship-resistant AI ecosystems to eliminate reliance on centralized providers and enable full on-chain intelligence.
Next-Gen Crypto & Web3 Infrastructure
We back crypto-native AI innovations, including on-chain inference, decentralized GPU computing, and trustless automation, powering the intersection of AI, DeFi, DAOs, and self-executing smart contracts for Web3 intelligence.
Metrics & impact
$11 Million Deployed
We fund visionary AI and Web3 projects, providing the capital and resources needed to drive scalable, decentralized, and trustless innovations in the rapidly evolving digital economy.
27 Projects Backed
Our investment strategy is built on data-driven insights, strategic partnerships, and next-gen AI infrastructure, ensuring long-term growth, decentralization, and real-world adoption across all supported ventures.
Past Companies of Founders We Support:
Portofolio Performance
Net Asset Value
Meet the Visionaries Behind Illuminance DAO
In the eyes of illuminance our investors and builders prefer to keep anonymous, as we believe in on chain anonymity and the beliefs of satoshi.
Daniel J Stern.
Founder of illuminance and lead developer of Clara. MIT CS PHD based in LA. 4 years experience working with blockchain analysis.
Zenith Chen.
Head venture lead, Largest investor of illuminance. Ex Quantitative analyst for UBS. Specialised in private equity and hedge funds.
Edna Lemans.
Creative lead, Degree in creative design, worked for apple, microsoft and coinbase as lead designer.
Marcus Williams.
Degree in cybersecurity @MIT. Lead engineer in illuminance's ai infrastructure
Dr. Sarah Chen.
Marketing lead, specialised in social media marketing, branding and HR
Michael Zervot.
Backend developer built many senior CEX infrastructures