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July 12, 2025 – Aspecta, the AI-powered digital identity ecosystem and blockchain infrastructure platform, today announced a strategic investment from YZi Labs, a global investment firm managing over $10 billion in assets. This significant backing will accelerate Aspecta's mission to establish an open economy for "alpha assets," enabling intelligent attestation, transparent price discovery, and lifecycle liquidity for a vast array of illiquid assets, including pre-TGE token shares, locked tokens, private equities, and Real World Assets (RWAs).
This investment from YZi Labs underscores a shared vision for transforming capital markets by bringing verifiability and open participation to emerging asset ecosystems. Aspecta addresses a critical gap where early-stage or locked assets often enter public markets without transparent pricing, leading to volatility and a lack of trust. By building foundational infrastructure, Aspecta aims to democratize access and foster fair participation in these burgeoning markets.
"We believe transparent, on-chain infrastructure for illiquid assets will be fundamental to the next chapter of blockchain adoption," said Alex Odagiu, Investment Director at YZi Labs. "Aspecta’s vision for permissionless price discovery and lifecycle liquidity aligns with our belief that open, inclusive markets can drive innovation and accessibility."
Aspecta's innovative solution combines two core pillars: BuildKey and Build Attestation (Aspecta ID). BuildKey is a universal framework that standardizes illiquid assets into ERC-20-like credentials, facilitating open on-chain price discovery, fair launches, and global on-chain participation. It allows for the claiming of diverse assets during liquidity events such as Token Generation Events (TGEs), token vesting, IPOs, and secondary market trading, sustaining a true and consistent price consensus.
Complementing BuildKey, Aspecta ID is an AI-powered reputation protocol that transforms billions of GitHub commits, on-chain data, and multidimensional work histories into intuitive, verifiable reputation. Designed as a user-centric and developer-focused digital identity solution, Aspecta ID enables individuals to demonstrate technical skills, document achievements, and explore opportunities based on insights from their web and on-chain data, linking accounts across Web2 and Web3 spaces like GitHub, Twitter, and wallet addresses.
Since its initial beta launch in March 2023, which saw over 130,000 waitlist signups, Aspecta has demonstrated remarkable growth and impact. As of June 2025, Aspecta has supported over 650,000 users across both Aspecta ID and BuildKey, with more than 54,000 GitHub-verified developers and projects onboarded. Its robust infrastructure now underpins open price discovery for over 25 digital assets and has facilitated more than 50 million asset trades via the BuildKey framework.
"We’re thrilled to be backed by YZi Labs to scale the open economy for trillions in illiquid assets," said Jack He, Co-Founder of Aspecta. "From pre-TGE shares to post-TGE locked tokens, Web2 private equities, RWAs, and non-standard OTC assets – our goal is to enable these assets to be attested, openly priced, freely traded, and supported from the earliest stages through collective effort."
The strategic funding from YZi Labs will enable Aspecta to deepen integrations with major partners, opening new avenues for transparent, long-term asset growth. It will also empower Aspecta to scale its open economy framework and liquidity systems to support an even wider range of illiquid assets within a permissionless, interoperable network, further advancing global adoption and open price discovery from the earliest stages.
Aspecta was incubated at Tsai CITY (Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale) in 2022, with its founding team hailing from prestigious institutions like Yale University, Tsinghua University, UC Berkeley, and McGill University. The team boasts significant AI expertise, holding 7 patents and papers in the field, including large language models and graph learning algorithms. Steve Liu, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and former Chief Scientist at Tinder, serves as Aspecta's Chief Scientist. Aspecta previously secured $3.5 million in seed funding across two stages in April and November 2022, with participation from ZhenFund, MiraclePlus, UpHonest Capital, TSVC, Taihill Venture, Y Startup Index, HashKey Capital, Foresight Ventures, SNZ Holding, and Infinity Ventures Crypto.
About Aspecta
Aspecta is an AI-powered digital identity ecosystem and blockchain infrastructure platform dedicated to building an open economy for "alpha assets." Through its flagship products, Aspecta ID and BuildKey, Aspecta provides intelligent attestation, transparent price discovery, and lifecycle liquidity for illiquid assets, empowering developers, projects, and investors to participate in a more equitable and efficient digital economy. Aspecta is committed to revolutionizing data potentials and empowering innovators by transforming complex data into verifiable reputation and tradable assets.About YZi Labs
YZi Labs manages over $10 billion in assets globally, guided by an "impact first" investment philosophy that believes meaningful returns naturally follow. YZi Labs invests in ventures at every stage, prioritizing those with solid fundamentals in Web3, AI, and biotech. Its portfolio spans over 300 projects from more than 25 countries across six continents, with over 65 portfolio companies having gone through its incubation programs.Compiled by CMO Intern team
