This episode unveils Natix's landmark partnership with Grab, demonstrating how decentralized data collection can fuel enterprise-grade global mapping and drive immediate protocol revenue, offering a critical case study for Crypto AI investors.
🎙️ Episode Overview: Natix's Strategic Leap with Grab
Alireza Ghods, Co-founder of Natix, returns to discuss a pivotal development: a multi-faceted partnership with Grab, Southeast Asia's leading super app. This collaboration aims to reshape the global mapping industry by leveraging Natix's decentralized data collection capabilities and Grab's established mapmaking technology. The discussion centers on how this synergy will generate protocol revenue from day one for Natix's new VX360 product and accelerate the development of enterprise-grade mapping solutions.
🚀 Natix's Mission and VX360 Product Introduction
- Alireza Ghods reintroduced Natix, a company building the world's largest camera infrastructure without owning any cameras, akin to Uber's model for taxis. Natix focuses on collecting on-street visual data for mapmaking, physical AI, and autonomous driving.
- Physical AI refers to AI systems that interact with and understand the physical world, often through sensor data like images and videos, crucial for applications like robotics and autonomous vehicles.
- The latest product, VX360, is a plugin for Tesla vehicles that records 360-degree video data from the car's four surrounding cameras.
- This data is then utilized for training foundational AI models for autonomous driving companies and for referencing, testing, and validation purposes.
- A foundational model (AI) is a large AI model trained on a vast quantity of broad data, designed to be adapted to a wide range of downstream tasks.
- Alireza stated, "We are building the largest camera infrastructure in the world without owning a single camera...to provide on street visual data and we use this data for both mapmaking but also for physical AI and autonomous driving."
📈 Natix Network Growth and VX360 Shipping Update
- Connor, the host, highlighted Natix's significant growth since Alireza's last appearance five months prior (around December of the previous year), with the network expanding to nearly 250,000 registered drivers and 170 million kilometers mapped across 171 countries.
- Alireza confirmed the commencement of VX360 shipping, slightly delayed from late March to early May to ensure optimal user experience and navigate tariff complexities.
- He emphasized his team's intensive efforts to manage logistics, ensuring devices reach end-users without extra costs. "Believe me when I say for the past few weeks my team has been working literally 24/7," Alireza shared, underscoring the dedication to fulfilling promises.
- The VX360 is set to go live starting May 2nd, with data collection already underway.
- Strategic Implication for Investors: The successful rollout of hardware like VX360 and the ability to manage complex global logistics are critical operational milestones for DePIN projects. Investors should scrutinize a project's execution capabilities in delivering physical components to its user base.
🤝 The Landmark Partnership: Natix and Grab
- Alireza announced the core news: a strategic partnership with Grab, Southeast Asia's leading super app.
- He explained that Grab is not just a ride-hailing service but also a significant player in mapmaking. Due to the lack of adequate navigation services when they started, Grab developed its own mapping division, Grab Maps.
- Alireza described Grab Maps as "one of the best if not the best crowdsource mapmaking company," utilizing data from millions of drivers via dashcams, smartphones, and high-fidelity cameras.
- Crowdsource mapmaking involves collecting geospatial data from a large group of individuals, often volunteers or users of a service, to create and update maps.
- Key Insight for Researchers: Grab's evolution into a sophisticated mapmaking entity, driven by operational necessity, showcases how real-world service providers can become significant sources of valuable AI training data and mapping technology.
📊 Facets of the Natix-Grab Collaboration
- The partnership is multi-dimensional:
- Data Customer: Grab will be a day-one data customer for VX360, using the collected data to refine its mapmaking pipeline for global expansion beyond Southeast Asia. Alireza emphasized, "I'm happy that VX360 is one of the few DePIN products that will generate protocol revenue from day one."
- DePIN (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks) are blockchain-based protocols that incentivize individuals and businesses to build and operate real-world physical infrastructure.
- Technology Access & Co-Development: Natix gains access to Grab's mapmaking technology, including hardware (camera stack, smartphone app) and AI software. This will enable them to jointly build and monetize enterprise-grade map features and services.
- Alireza revealed that the VX360 plugin itself utilizes Grab's core technology, adapted for Natix's requirements.
- Grab's hardware includes dashcams, Tesla plugins, and an award-winning 360-degree camera suitable for high-fidelity mapping, capable of replacing more cumbersome solutions like Google Street View cars.
- On the software side, Grab possesses an advanced pipeline to convert images into detailed map features (e.g., traffic lights, signs).
- Actionable Insight for Investors: This dual role of Grab as both a customer and technology enabler significantly de-risks Natix's market entry and technological development, providing a strong validation signal.
⚙️ Economics and Rationale of the Partnership
- Regarding the economics, Alireza clarified that Natix is not paying for access to Grab's mapping pipeline. Instead, it's structured more like a joint venture for monetizing map services built using Natix's data and Grab's technology. "It's our data, their technology for adding value to our data, and then we we're essentially monetizing it together."
- Natix's Rationale:
- VX360 data has two primary customer groups: mapmakers (for street-level imagery and map attributes) and autonomous driving companies.
- Leveraging Grab's established, enterprise-grade pipeline allows Natix to offer higher-value map attributes rather than just raw imagery, increasing revenue potential and speed to market. This avoids the costly and time-consuming process of building a comparable stack from scratch.
- Grab's Rationale:
- While Grab has superior crowdsourced mapmaking technology and a strong driver network in Southeast Asia, expanding to regions like the US and Europe requires data from those areas where Grab doesn't have a ride-sharing presence.
- Natix provides this crucial data, enabling Grab to extend its mapping services globally.
- Strategic Implication: This symbiotic relationship, where Natix provides the decentralized data collection network and Grab offers the processing and monetization engine, presents a powerful model for DePIN projects seeking to scale and enter enterprise markets.
🌐 Future Focus: Data Monetization and Physical AI
- Alireza reiterated Natix's core business: building a crowdsourced camera network to collect street-level visual data.
- The strategy involves partnering with entities like Grab (for mapmaking) and others (for autonomous driving) to add value to this raw data.
- He explained, "When you process the data, you multiply the value of data, and this is where the real revenue potential is."
- Alireza expressed excitement for upcoming announcements related to autonomous driving and physical AI, areas he believes are underserved in the DePIN space. He views Natix's data as a "painkiller" for the challenges in physical AI development.
- Insight for Researchers: The emphasis on processing raw data to multiply its value highlights a key area for innovation in the Crypto AI space – developing efficient, decentralized AI pipelines for transforming sensor data into high-value, marketable insights.
🔑 Conclusion: Strategic Symbiosis for DePIN Success
Natix's partnership with Grab exemplifies a potent strategy for DePIN projects: achieving early revenue and technological leverage through symbiotic enterprise collaborations. Crypto AI investors and researchers should closely track such models as indicators of market validation, scalability, and the evolving landscape of decentralized data monetization.
