VC Due Diligence Memo: USDAI

Name: Fere AI
Availability: InStock

Published 12/15/2025, 10:45:00 PM

1. Comprehensive Overview on the Founders

USDAI was developed by Permian Labs, co-founded by David Choi, Conor Moore, and Ivan Sergeev in 2021. These three individuals also notably co-founded MetaStreet in 2021, a DeFi protocol.

David Choi (CEO, Permian Labs)
- Role: Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Permian Labs.
- Background: Graduated from Rutgers Business School in 2017. He founded Leverage Companies, a Newark-based real estate private equity firm, two years later. His prior experience includes roles at Taureon and Deutsche Bank.
- Social/Personal: Active on LinkedIn. An Instagram post describes him as a "God-made Millionaire, Real Estate Investor, Fund Manager, and CEO," indicating entrepreneurial success beyond the crypto space.
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Conor Moore (COO, Permian Labs)
- Role: Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Permian Labs.
- Background: Previously served as a Private Equity Investment Analyst at Rockpoint Group. He is also the founder of MetaStreet Labs.
- Social/Personal: Present on LinkedIn and active on X (formerly Twitter) with the handle @_ConorMoore, where he regularly shares insights on Permian Labs and USDAI.
- Sources:
Ivan Sergeev (Co-founder, Permian Labs)
- Role: Co-founder of Permian Labs and founder of MetaStreet.
- Background: An alumnus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His professional history includes an FPGA Engineer role at DRW and an association with Nuand LLC. He specializes in the intersection of hardware and software, focusing on communications, networking, and embedded systems.
- Social/Personal: Maintains a LinkedIn profile. An Instagram account (@theivansergeev77) was identified, though its content suggests it's a personal account and may not be directly relevant to his professional crypto endeavors.
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2. History of the Company

Permian Labs Inception and Funding:

Founding: Permian Labs was established in 2021 by David Choi, Conor Moore, and Ivan Sergeev.
Funding: The company has successfully raised a total of $38 million in funding, which includes a notable $13.4 million Series A round.
Investors: Permian Labs has secured investments from prominent venture capital funds and also received strategic investment from Coinbase Ventures.
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USDAI Launch and Core Purpose:

Launch Date: The USD.AI stablecoin protocol, developed by Permian Labs, officially launched in August 2025.
Mission: USDAI's core mission is to finance the rapidly expanding AI infrastructure sector by providing loans to AI firms. This is achieved by using Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) hardware as collateral, effectively directing crypto liquidity towards this critical industry.
Innovation: This pioneering model, referred to as the "GPU Mortgage," aims to drastically reduce loan approval times by over 90% compared to traditional financing, by treating GPUs as a fungible and verifiable commodity.
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3. Current Product and How it Has Changed Over Time

USDAI offers a novel approach to stablecoin functionality by blending real-world asset (RWA) collateralization with decentralized finance to support the AI and DePIN sectors. The core product revolves around a dual-token structure backed by GPU mortgages.

Description: USDAI provides a yield-bearing synthetic dollar (USDai) that is collateralized by a combination of tokenized U.S. Treasuries (via the M0 platform) and loans secured by AI hardware. Its primary function is to serve as a lending protocol that enables AI infrastructure operators to access capital by collateralizing their GPU assets.

Dual-Token Structure:

USDai: This is a 1:1 USD-pegged stablecoin. It is non-yield-bearing and designed for deep secondary market liquidity across DeFi and CeFi. Its stability is derived from underlying collateral.
sUSDai: This is the staked, yield-bearing version of USDai. Holders of sUSDai earn yield generated from the interest payments of the underlying GPU loan portfolio, providing a novel yield opportunity within the stablecoin ecosystem.

Key Components & Architecture:

GPU Warehouse Receipt Token (GWRT): Central to USDAI's architecture, GWRTs tokenizes physical GPU hardware, turning them into on-chain, verifiable, and liquid collateral assets. Permian Labs acts as the issuer and maintains oversight of these GWRTs.
On-Chain Operation: USDAI is designed as a fully on-chain product. This means all transactions, collateralization, and debt obligations are transparently recorded and managed on the blockchain, providing a high degree of trust and auditability.
Economic Flywheel: The system is engineered to create a powerful economic flywheel: Productive ETH (or other base assets) are deposited to mint USDai. This USDai is then used to finance productive AI hardware, generating returns that flow back into the system, sustaining the yield for sUSDai holders.
Oracleless Design: For capital market assets, USDAI aims to rebuild the DeFi stack to be "oracleless," suggesting a design that minimizes reliance on external data feeds for certain operations, potentially increasing robustness against oracle manipulation.
Arbitrum Integration: USDAI operates on and integrates with the Arbitrum ecosystem, leveraging its scalability and lower transaction costs for efficient operations.

Tech Stack (with its Maturity): The core tech stack leverages established blockchain infrastructure and innovative RWA tokenization:

Blockchain Infrastructure: Primarily built on Ethereum-compatible chains like Arbitrum, benefiting from mature smart contract platforms. Future plans include expansion to Berachain and other L1s/L2s.
RWA Tokenization: The GWRT system represents a mature application of RWA tokenization, converting physical assets into fungible digital representations.
Stablecoin Platform: Utilizes M0's stablecoin platform for USDai, indicating reliance on a specialized and likely robust framework for synthetic dollar issuance.
Oracle Integration: Integrates Chainlink Price Feeds for securing accurate on-chain rates for its AI-backed stablecoin infrastructure.
Maturity: The combination of battle-tested blockchain environments (Arbitrum), established RWA tokenization concepts, and reputable oracle solutions (Chainlink) suggests a moderately mature and robust tech stack. The "oracleless" design for capital market assets indicates forward-thinking architectural choices.

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4. Partnerships, Compliance, and Differentiation Information

Partnerships:

USDAI has actively forged strategic partnerships to build out its InfraFi ecosystem and ensure the stability and accessibility of its stablecoin offerings.

QumulusAI: A significant collaboration includes a $500 million non-recourse financing facility extended to QumulusAI. This partnership highlights USDAI's direct involvement in accelerating AI infrastructure development by providing capital to AI compute operators.