Vangrid, an Amsterdam-based spatial data DePIN company, has raised a $9 million seed round via SAFT with HashKey, Borderless, Crypto.com Capital, Animoca Brands, Gate Labs, and Mapleblock as key stakeholders. The funds will expand their existing network of providing verified 3D geospatial data for AI, robotics and defense use cases.
Prisonersa decentralized physical infrastructure network focused on spatial data, has raised $9 million in a seed round structured as SAFT, co-founder and CEO Robert Brayton told The Block.
borderless hash key, Crypto.com Capital, Animoca brands, Gateway Laboratories and MapleBlock Capital He involved what Vangrid calls “key stakeholders,” who combine financial and strategic roles. Brighton said no board seats had been given and declined to reveal the project’s evaluation.
The fundraising began in August 2025 and closed in several tranches by January 2026, with the team delaying the announcement until the network was up and running. Vangrid plans to use the capital to expand its spatial data network, hire across engineering and data operations, and deepen partnerships with companies building physical AI infrastructure and applications.
The Vangrid network pays contributors to capture real-world locations on smartphones, turning them into cross-chain verified 3D spatial models. “Contributors capture real-world locations on their smartphones, we rebuild them into 3D spatial models and verify everything on-chain,” Brayton said, adding that buyers commission specific locations and pay for verified footage, making the system demand-driven from the start.
The project targets AI builders working on robots, autonomous agents, and digital models that require constantly updated spatial data at the ground level. The same data could also serve defense and government organizations operating in GPS-denied or rapidly changing environments, Brayton said.
Vangrid positions itself between traditional mapping companies that rely on fleets of expensive, centrally owned vehicles and open crowdsourcing networks that struggle to verify the quality and provenance of data. The project says it anonymizes faces and license plates on the device before uploading, then uses on-chain verification to determine the origin of the data before selling it.
The network is built on Base and makes use of the Ethereum certificate service to verify captured data batches. Vangrid’s public explorer shows nearly 100,000 verified images, 200,000 grid events and more than 1,300 batch certificates, Brayton said.
Contributors are currently being paid via bonuses, with associated token and token bonus mechanisms planned for later this year. Vangrid’s web and Android apps are now available, with an iOS app on the roadmap.
The Amsterdam-based startup has a core team of 14 people and has signed memorandums of understanding with undisclosed strategic data partners, including organizations in defense and robotics. Brighton joined as co-founder and CEO in May, after founder Khaled Bin Rafiq kicked off the project in July 2025.
