Protocol Labs Venture Studio

PLVS partners with and invests in leading technology ecosystems and economies around the world that push humanity forward.

[Founder School @FS_Build]

Applications Closing Soon!

25 spots and we’re closing applications very soon. If you’re serious about building your startup, don’t wait until it’s too late.

Apply before the deadline here: https://t.co/tVvwZlEPGM

#LastCall #StartupOpportunity

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

AI agents making BTC payments, live: intra-subnet, cross-subnet, and funding subnet wallets from L1. 🔥Demo below, running on Bitcoin-IPC subnets anchored to Bitcoin regtest.

[Bitcoin Scaling Labs @BTCScalingLabs]

AI agents can now make BTC payments using Bitcoin-IPC!

Watch below Claude make intra-subnet and cross-subnet payments in BTC when prompted by user. We also demonstrate funding subnet wallets from Bitcoin L1 address.

In this demo, Bitcoin-IPC subnets were anchored to Bitcoin regtest.

[Bitcoin Scaling Labs @BTCScalingLabs]

AI agents can now make BTC payments using Bitcoin-IPC!

Watch below Claude make intra-subnet and cross-subnet payments in BTC when prompted by user. We also demonstrate funding subnet wallets from Bitcoin L1 address.

In this demo, Bitcoin-IPC subnets were anchored to Bitcoin regtest.

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

The AI bottleneck isn't chips anymore. It's the grid. Data centers now wait up to 10 years to connect to power. 👀

[Lacey @laceywisdom]

AI's hidden cost isn't the models. It's the electricity.
ChatGPT hit 1B monthly users in May 2026 and every single query burns energy. At @plcapital, we don't see a compute crisis coming. We see an energy one 🧵 (1/9)

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

Great OpSec workshop @protocollabs NYC Hub this morning with @joe_vanloon @audit_wizard 🔐
If you missed it → https://t.co/8RSNQeyzEt
One that stuck: keep work and personal devices seperate always...cheap insurance compared to the cost of a breach.

[BitRobot 🦾 @BitRobotNetwork]

Can a robot beat a human origami grandmaster? We're sponsoring the Robotic Origami Competition at @ieeeras IROS 2026 to find out.

Participating teams get 500+ teleop episodes, @LightwheelAI sim access, and remote @SharpaRobotics hand evals.

Registration link below 👇

[Jacques Carolan @JacquesCarolan]

I had an absolute blast chatting with @juanbenet about the future of neurotech.

For neurotech to reach everyone who needs it, we need treatments that are both more effective and dramatically easier to deliver. That’s the ambition behind the programmes I’m leading at @ARIA_research.

Juan is a super thoughtful host, and this is the deepest conversation I've had about my journey, what it means to lead ambitious R&D, and the future we could unlock if next-generation brain therapies can genuinely scale.

[BitRobot 🦾 @BitRobotNetwork]

Our COO @amanda0x is on with @crescendoweb3 @_theshash to discuss recent developments in the robotics industry 🦾

Joining us are @abdulalali at @decasonic @Neuron_World and @cybernetic_lab

[Charlotte Kapoor @KapoorCharlotte]

The GPT moment for robotics isn't just about the hardware or the model. The missing layer is verifiable, open infrastructure underneath - the same primitives that made the internet composable. That's where the durable opportunity sits. @laceywisdom and @Bholden thesis 👇👇👇

[Charlotte Kapoor @KapoorCharlotte]

I will be there 5-10th June and would love to connect! @Techweek_

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

Update from muShanghai: a factory visit to @AGIBOTofficial, one of the fastest-growing robotics startups in China.

We walked through the production line and the data collection facility, watching humanoid robots trained on physical-world tasks in real time.

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

Two days into @themu_xyz, here’s what went down:

ClawCon: @OpenClaw builders pushing agentic AI into embodied hardware, with agents reasoning over physical-world state in deployed systems.

LLM Day: @Alibaba_Qwen, @Kimi_Moonshot, @Zai_org, @StepFun_ai, and @AntGroup in one room discussing the shift toward agentic systems and real-world execution.

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

Why we're here: China is dense in exactly what we're looking for - applied AI, humanoid robotics, biotech and neurotech coming out of top university labs, iterating at speeds the rest of the world is catching up to. We want to meet the builders still in the lab and the ones already shipping. Come find us.

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

Spending the next four weeks in Shanghai as part of @themu_xyz - a pop-up city of AI, robotics, biotech and deep tech builders.
If you're building something hard, come find us. Open sessions for builder discussion, project feedback and mentorship alongside teams from @Filecoin, @Andentech @arkhai_io , and @simplefi_tech

[Protocol Labs @protocollabs]

.@ProtocolLabs is joining muShanghai — a 4-week residency co-hosted by @AlibabaGroup and @themu_xyz bringing together builders, researchers, founders, and investors from 50+ countries across AI, biotech, robotics, and emerging technologies.

A few activations from the network. ⬇️

🧵

[Juan Benet @juanbenet]

Here is Episode 2 of my new podcast dedicated to conversations on the future of neurotech, computing, intelligence, and more.

My guest Dr. Ben Rapoport is co-founder and CSO of Precision Neuroscience (@PrecisionNeuro_), Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Scientific Director at Mount Sinai. Previously, he co-founded Neuralink and Simbionics (acquired by Apple).

Precision is building a minimally invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) that reads from thousands of points on the cortex without penetrating it. The Layer 7 device is implanted through a one-millimeter slit in the skull rather than the larger borehole other approaches require. It is also fully removable.

Precision seeks to help the 5 million people living with severe paralysis in the US (including 800,000 new stroke cases per year). In March 2025, Precision received FDA clearance for a temporary wired version of the system. Over 85 patients have been implanted with and used the device in clinical studies (50 at the time of our conversation). Wireless implants are planned for 2027.

We go deep on the history of Neurotech from the 1980s to the ML inflection points that triggered Neuralink's founding, why surface ECoG was a contrarian bet that's now paying off, the path to treating paralysis and stroke at scale, and why Ben believes neural data is at the same inflection point genomic data was in 2000 — a whole class of biological problems about to become tractable as computer science problems.

Chapters
00:00:00 Introduction
00:04:39 Paralysis as a lens to understand the brain
00:05:36 The 1980s breakthrough: population encoding and the birth of BCI
00:14:36 Google Translate, ML, and the founding of Neuralink
00:23:08 What is the long-term vision of Precision Neuroscience
00:31:56 Layer 7 and why transformative technology looks impossible at first
00:50:21 The surgery: a slit in the skull, not a borehole
00:55:19 The clinical program: who are the patients
01:04:16 FDA clearance and the path to wireless implants in 2027
01:08:32 The patient population: paralysis and stroke at scale
01:16:26 Neural data as the new genomics
01:30:06 BCIs, AI, and the future of the human-machine interface
01:31:22 From medical necessity to lifestyle technology
01:40:36 Precision as a platform — and an optimistic vision

If you're interested in these kinds of discussions, subscribe to the podcast. And if there’s anyone you’d like to see or hear on the podcast, reply with your suggestions.

Full Episode 2 here and in other platforms below.

[Protocol Labs Venture Studio @talentprotocol]

🔥Line up - Today @ 12PM ET

[Protocol Labs @protocollabs]

.@harrygrieve from @gensynai joins @rgvrmdya from @reppo and @PLCapital’s @bradholden today at 12 PM ET to discuss AI feedback systems, verifiable intelligence, and the role of trust and reproducibility as AI systems scale.

🛎️Set your reminders.

[Protocol Labs @protocollabs]

Prediction markets are emerging as a coordination layer for AI — shaping how data, feedback, and intelligence are evaluated and verified.

Join the X Space “The Future of AI Markets: Data, Feedback & Verifiable Intelligence” with @plcapital's @bradholden and @reppo's @rgvrmdya.

[Simo @Simonpuebla_]

@Andentech + @nvidia 💙

Our first partner. If you're building in AI, this matters

10 spots open for AI/Tech companies in the first digital zone in Latam.

Digital incorporation w/ tax benefits + up to $1.5M in NVIDIA perks: compute, hardware, VC network..

DM or comment 👇 LFG