Vangrid: the $9M is not the most interesting part Most people saw the @vangrid_io announcement and focused on the $9M funding round. I looked at it from a different angle. The more interesting signal is that the infrastructure was already being built before the funding became public. Here’s what caught my attention: Products are already live Vangrid has web and Android products that allow users to capture information from real-world environments. Smartphones become the perception layer Instead of relying entirely on expensive specialized hardware, Vangrid can use devices people already carry cameras, sensors and location data to collect spatial information. Physical AI has a real-world data problem AI models can become increasingly capable, but robots still need accurate information about the environments they operate in. The physical world is constantly changing A robot can’t learn every warehouse, building, street or workspace in a laboratory. Reality is simply too large and dynamic. Data collection is only half the problem Capturing information is useful only if there is also a way to establish where that data came from and whether it has been properly verified. This is where provenance matters Vangrid is building an attestation and provenance layer so physical-world data can become more verifiable and traceable. There is already network activity More than 883K captures, 3.5K attestations, and over $296K USDC settled through verified bounties have been recorded. That changes how I look at Vangrid. This isn’t simply a “$9M funding” story. It’s a story about building an economic marketplace for real-world data. If Physical AI becomes a major computing category, high-quality spatial data could become increasingly valuable. So for me: The funding gets attention. The infrastructure determines whether that attention lasts. That’s the part of Vangrid I’m watching next. 🦾