Doc.ai raises $2.3 million in cryptocurrency presale

Doc.ai, a startup making natural language processing focused on health care, has raised $2.3 million in the early sale of digital tokens for its new cryptocurrency, Neurons.

Doc.ai came out of stealth mode in late August and uses blockchain to timestamp and decentralize its datasets and conversational AI. It plans to release three NLP services within the next 12 months.

Patients will be able to ask Doc.ai questions about their health. To get answers, they share info such as lab test results, illnesses, or the medication they use with AI trained to draw conclusions from data such as blood test results, genomics tests, or medicine prescribed by a doctor.

The presale of tokens, or Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFT) investment, was made by 10 people, including noted crypto investor Pantera Capital and Jaxx CEO and Ethereum cofounder Anthony Di Iorio.

“I am amazed by the potential that Doc.ai technology has for millions of people all over the world and possible network effects of the NRN token. I am looking forward to exploring potential synergies between doc.ai and Jaxx,” Iorio said in a statement.

Neurons are based on the ERC-20 standard and the Ethereum blockchain. A public sale of Neurons is set for September 28.

Doc.ai is one of three initial offerings for Ethereum-based tokens to support chat or conversational AI services to take place in the coming weeks. Chat app Kik has raised $50 million ahead of its initial public Kin token offering on held September 12. Anonymous human advice bot Sensay will hold its initial token offering for the Sense currency October 10.

Doc.ai raised an undisclosed amount of money in a seed funding with participation from Comet Labs, S2 Capital, and other investors. The company founded in 2016 has 17 employees and is based in Palo Alto, California.