Crypto Investment Firm Multicoin Leads $8M Purchase of GEOD Tokens to Build a Hyper-Accurate Alternative to GPS

Geodnet hails from crypto's buzzy DePIN wing of startups that financially incentivize regular people to host their physical infrastructure.

Crypto investment firm Multicoin Capital is leading an $8 million purchase of GEOD tokens, a major capital injection into the crypto project building a hyper-accurate alternative to GPS.

Geodnet is part of crypto’s buzzy DePIN wing of startups, which financially incentivize regular people to host their physical infrastructure. The project's token (its incentive mechanism) has more than doubled in the past 12 months amid torrid demand for Geodnet's services.

The GPS satellites that tell your phone how far you are from the next intersection are fine for a drive around town, but not so much for Geodnet's user base of farming drones and industrial robots, said project lead Mike Horton. They need location data down "to the size of a golf ball."

Geodnet clients, many of whom are unaware of its crypto incentives, operate nearly 14,000 base stations that provide centimeter-level location data. Anyone running a $700 base station earns new GEOD tokens, a model that shifts the normally astronomical cost of deploying equipment away from the company.

"We've been able to scale this thing crazy fast because of DePIN,” said Horton. “We built in two years what the industry has been working on for 20 years, and we now have twice as many stations as anyone else."

Multicoin is betting that Geodnet's cheap, all-encompassing geospatial network will help facilitate the explosive growth of technologies that need accurate location data, especially robots: self-driving vehicles, delivery drones, autonomous farming equipment, etc.

"For these robots to function, they need to answer a fundamental question: Where am I?" wrote Multicoin Investment Partner Shayon Sengupta in a position paper.

Geodnet's existing customers are generating over $3 million in annual recurring revenue, according to Horton, who is targeting 2025 growth in India and South America, especially in the farming sector.

The investors are calling the fundraise a "strategic" investment in which they bought GEOD tokens directly from the Geodnet Foundation, the entity behind the network. Geodnet last raised capital in April 2024 from Coinfund, Pantera and VanEck.

"We're raising the money to really focus on robots and drones," said Horton.