Brainfund Group, doing business as Brainfund and formerly known as Everipedia, is a technology company focused on developing and investing in cutting-edge technologies in innovative industries with a special focus on education, fintech and artificial intelligence. ^[2][1]

Brainfund was born out of the restructuring of Everipedia in 2022 when it became the parent company of IQ.wiki and other former Everipedia entities. The formation of Brainfund was motivated by the desire to streamline its flagship encyclopedia product while giving greater autonomy to the expanding range of other initiatives pursued by the company.

History

Founding of Everipedia

Back in 2014, Everipedia was founded from a dorm room at UCLA with a mission to change the landscape of online knowledge-sharing. At its inception, Everipedia aimed to create a more inclusive and modern version of Wikipedia. The founders drew inspiration from the words of Paul Graham, the co-founder of Y Combinator. In 2008, Graham penned a blog post titled "Startup Ideas We'd Like to Fund," where he expressed a desire to support "more open alternatives to Wikipedia". This served as a catalyst for the team, who set out to build a platform that would empower users to contribute to a more comprehensive, diverse, and accessible body of knowledge. ^[2]

Building the world's first blockchain encyclopedia

December 2017 marked a significant turning point for the company as they revealed their plan to integrate blockchain technology on Everipedia. In an exclusive feature with Wired, they announced their intention to become the first-ever blockchain encyclopedia, a move that promised to revolutionize the way information is created, verified, and accessed.

Series A Raise

In February 2018, the company raised $30 million from Galaxy Digital, an investment bank specializing in the digital asset industries. The raise provided a significant boost to the company's efforts to create a more open, accessible, and diverse body of knowledge, paving the way for even greater innovations in the years to come.

Evolution beyond encyclopedia

Starting in 2020, Everipedia underwent a significant transformation as its readership and editorship shifted towards fintech and blockchain content. In response to this growing trend, the company began to expand its operations beyond the confines of the encyclopedia, exploring new avenues for innovation and growth.

One such initiative was the launch of OraQles, a service that allowed verified first parties to bring real-world information on-chain. This new platform promised to usher in a new era of decentralized knowledge sharing and create a more transparent and secure way to record and verify critical information. The potential of this new technology was fully realized on November 4, 2020, when the Associated Press used the software to publish the US election race calls on-chain. This historic event marked the first time in history that a US election was recorded and called on the blockchain, and it was covered extensively by leading publications such as Forbes, CoinDesk, and Nasdaq.

Corporate identity

The month of October 2022 brought significant changes to Everipedia, as the company's flagship encyclopedia product underwent a major rebranding effort, officially becoming known as IQ.wiki. This move was accompanied by the formation of Brainfund, a new parent company designed to provide greater flexibility and autonomy to the expanding suite of initiatives under the Everipedia umbrella. ^[2]

The decision to rebrand IQ.wiki was motivated by a desire to streamline operations and ensure that the company remained focused on its core mission of democratizing knowledge sharing. By separating IQ.wiki from the broader scope of initiatives under the Brainfund banner, the company was able to provide more targeted support and resources to its encyclopedia product, allowing it to thrive and evolve in a rapidly changing landscape.

Structure

Senior Leadership

Chief Executive Officer: Theodor Forselius ^[3]
COO & CFO: Suchet Dhindsa
Co-Founder & President: Sam Kazemian
Co-Founder & Board: Travis Moore
Director of Operations: Roberto Dobrescu
CBO, IQ.wiki: Navin Vethanayagam
CTO, IQ.wiki: Cesar Rodriguez

Offices

Brainfund's US headquarters is located in Las Vegas, Nevada. It also has an office in Stockholm, Sweden. It formerly had offices in Westwood, California and Santa Monica, California.