Aoki Labs

Aoki Labs

Aoki Labs was founded in 2019 by Ben Forman, a serial entrepreneur, alongside Greg Isenberg, CEO of Late Checkout, and a pseudonymous cryptographer known professionally as 'Aoki'. The group identified a structural gap: informal investor communities on Discord, Telegram, and Twitter were pooling capital but could not legally sign contracts or issue equity. Aoki Labs supplies the corporate chassis—a Delaware series LLC wrapper and lightweight operating agreement—that converts these loose collectives into formal investment vehicles. The firm deploys capital indirectly by providing the legal rails for syndicates, but its templates now back hundreds of active SPVs that invest across early-stage Web3, AI, and consumer technology. Deals flow from community-led diligence rather than a central investment committee. Typical structures use a single-purpose vehicle to invest in a single startup, with deal terms set by the syndicate lead. Confirmed SPV targets span DeFi protocols, developer tools, and AI-native applications, with back-office administration for cap table management and tax reporting handled by Aoki's software layer. Aoki Labs operates without a publicly reported AUM because it does not manage a commingled fund. Instead, it tracks the aggregate deployment volume flowing through its legal templates, though deployment figures remain undisclosed (public record). The firm maintains a bench of startup lawyers and operators who advise syndicate leads on structuring deals, but it does not employ a dedicated investment team in the traditional sense. Its operations are anchored in Santa Monica, with an engineering presence across Los Angeles and the Bay Area. Structurally, Aoki Labs is not a registered investment adviser and does not participate in PPM distribution or investor verification, making it categorically distinct from platforms like AngelList or Assure. It operates as a legal-fintech hybrid that sells entity-formation-as-a-service to unaffiliated investor groups, a posture that sidesteps broker-dealer regulation by never touching the securities themselves. The firm's long-term differentiator is that it owns the entity templates and associated smart-contract tooling, but the capital, sourcing, and governance sit entirely with the syndicates.