Crypto Entrepreneurs Are Pivoting to AI. Here’s One Founder’s Experience.

In 2021, at the height of the investor frenzy for crypto startups, entrepreneur Chris Horne raised $2 million in seed funding for Filta, a marketplace on which customers could buy and sell custom nonfungible token face filters that could digitally augment their face, say, by adding cat whiskers or a block head. But by the time the company launched in late summer of 2022, enthusiasm for crypto had waned and Filta was faltering. 

So Horne pivoted to the new hottest sector: artificial intelligence. He ditched the NFT idea, and this year relaunched Filta as a generative AI-powered digital pet, one that talks and can offer its owner emotional support. The technology behind his new company is OpenAI’s large language model, ChatGPT. And Horne is running his new Filta venture off the capital he raised for his original concept.