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The EU Digital Omnibus: What “Simplification” Means In Practice

Beam — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 10:30:49 GMT

This briefing is based on the European Commission’s Digital Omnibus initiative and its stated objective of simplifying and streamlining the EU digital regulatory framework, particularly across the GDPR, DSA, DMA, and the AI Act, as well as the related European Commission’s Factsheet and Q&A.

Over the past years, European digital regulation has expanded rapidly, with legal instruments adopted to address platforms, data, AI systems, and online services. At the same time, this expansion created a widely shared concern of regulatory complexity, both in how the rules are interpreted by covered organisations and applied by competent authorities.

The “Digital Omnibus” package introduced on 19 November 2025 was presented by the European Commission as a response to that concern. Its stated aim is the “simplification of the digital legislative sector”, not deregulation, but improved coherence, consistency, and enforceability.

Policy Objective of the Digital Omnibus

Improving Coherence in Digital Rules

At a high level, the Digital Omnibus seeks to:

reduce fragmentation between EU digital laws,
clarify supervisory competences,
and make the overall framework easier to navigate.

From a policy standpoint, this objective seems coherent as, for the past few years, multiple overlapping regimes have been applied unevenly across Member States, creating legal uncertainty and slowing down enforcement, compliance and, in practice, business operations.

The Digital Omnibus should therefore be understood primarily as a governance initiative aimed at improving how existing digital rules operate together in practice.

One of the most important practical effects of the Digital Omnibus is the move toward “cumulative applicability”. In the past, regulatory uncertainty often revolved around identifying the ‘right’ regime. Today, digital products increasingly fall within the scope of multiple EU instruments at the same time. Under the Omnibus logic, data protection, platform governance, AI regulation, and consumer protection are no longer treated as isolated silos and compliance is expected to be assessed holistically at product and system level.

For companies, this reframes the compliance question. The issue is no longer which regulation applies, but how several regulations apply together to the same product or service.

Where Simplification Actually Occurs

How Rules Are Being Streamlined

Several areas stand out as examples of “simplification”:

Data and Privacy Rules

In the area of data and privacy, the Omnibus takes a cautious approach. The GDPR is not reopened, and its core principles remain unchanged:

What the Commission aims to address is the uncertainty around how the GDPR interacts with other data legislation, in particular where companies handle datasets that are partly personal and partly non-personal.

For instance, a consumer facing app that uses behavioural data and device information to improve its service may find itself navigating GDPR obligations plus rules in the Data Act. In response, many organisations can adopt overly defensive compliance positions (relying on repeated consent or restricting data reuse).

The Omnibus seeks to reduce this uncertainty by clarifying how responsibilities are allocated at different stages of the data lifecycle:
GDPR continues to govern the processing of personal data as such, including lawful basis, transparency, and individual rights. However, the proposal makes clear that once those GDPR requirements have been properly addressed, rules on access to and reuse of data do not automatically remain governed by GDPR simply because a dataset initially contained personal data.
Where data is subsequently transformed, aggregated, or otherwise structured so that it consists of non-personal or mixed data subject to appropriate safeguards, the applicable framework for access and reuse shifts to the Data Act. In practice, this is intended to avoid treating all downstream uses of a dataset as indefinitely subject to the full GDPR compliance logic.

Alongside this clarification, the Commission proposes more targeted adjustments aimed at recurring areas of difficulty in implementation. These include:

clearer guidance on when data should still be considered personal data in technically complex environments, such as analytics pipelines or AI training workflows,
changes to consent and tracking mechanisms intended to limit repeated consent requests where no meaningful new choice is involved.

Cybersecurity Reporting

Cybersecurity incident reporting is another area where complexity has built up over time:

A single incident can currently trigger multiple notification duties under different instruments (often requiring similar information to be reported to different authorities on different timelines).
The Omnibus addresses this issue at a procedural level: companies would be able to submit information through a single entry point, with authorities coordinating internally rather than requiring multiple parallel filings.

AI Act Implementation

The treatment of the AI Act under the Digital Omnibus follows a similar logic:

The Commission does not revisit the substance of AI obligations but acknowledges that implementation depends heavily on technical standards and guidance that are still being developed.
For companies building or deploying AI systems, especially those likely to fall within the high-risk category (e.g. AI systems involving biometrics recognition or systems used in the medical field — read our briefing on the AI Act: The new rules of AI procurement), this gap between legal requirements and operational tooling has been a real concern. The Omnibus responds by postponing certain timelines and introducing support measures intended to align compliance deadlines with the availability of standards and conformity assessment tools.
It also extends some compliance modalities beyond traditional SMEs to include small mid-cap companies, recognising that many technology firms sit between those categories in practice.

Simplification — Not Fewer Obligations

Taken together, the changes introduced by the Digital Omnibus do not amount to a reduction in regulatory obligations or a lowering of standards. Core duties around data protection, transparency, risk management, governance, and documentation remain fully in place.

The simplification pursued by the Omnibus is structural rather than substantive. It lies in clearer interaction between regimes, more coherent enforcement mechanisms, and reduced procedural duplication, not in limiting the scope of applicable rules.

Enforcement From Authorities

One of the less explicit effects of simplification is increased predictability for enforcement authorities. By removing duplicative reporting channels and aligning concepts across laws, regulators can enforce more consistently and without unnecessary procedural friction.

For companies, this may change the timing of risk. When compliance expectations are clearer and enforcement pathways more streamlined: regulatory issues may surface earlier in a company’s lifecycle if governance, documentation, or internal processes are not sufficiently aligned across domains.

What Happens Next?

The Digital Omnibus initiative is not yet law. The Commission proposal must now follow the ordinary legislative procedure, meaning it must be examined, amended, and adopted jointly by the Council of the EU (representing Member States) and by the European Parliament.

It is expected that Parliament and Council will aim to reach agreement by the end of 2026, although this timeline is ambitious. Because the Omnibus package touches on large bodies of law (e.g., GDPR, AI Act, NIS2, Data Act), co-legislators may propose substantive changes, creating several rounds of negotiation.
One important consideration is how the Digital Omnibus timelines interact with existing ones, particularly the AI Act. Under the current AI Act schedule, stricter obligations for “high-risk” systems are set to apply in mid-2026. The Omnibus proposal already suggests delays to those application dates, effectively aligning them with the availability of supporting technical standards and compliance tools.
Once adopted and published, the revised rules under the Omnibus will enter into force on their respective timelines. In several key areas, especially AI and cybersecurity, enforcement will only begin after transition periods. As a consequence, full enforcement should not begin before 2027 or 2028.

What This Means For Organisations

The Omnibus’s approach gives rise to a number of practical implications:

Build compliance earlier in product and architectural design rather than retrofitting it after development.
Strengthen cross-functional coordination among legal, engineering, and product teams to interpret how multiple instruments apply together.
Invest in governance structures that can capture interactions across data protection, cybersecurity, and AI obligations.

In practice, this means that complexity has not disappeared, but that compliance should be addressed earlier, at the level of product design and deployment decisions.

Beam Foundation’s Perspective

At Beam Foundation, we view the Digital Omnibus as part of a broader EU trajectory toward a more integrated regulatory landscape rather than a move toward deregulation. The Commission’s Q&A makes clear that simplification in official terms means “clarity, coherence, and reduced duplication”, not fewer obligations or lighter standards.

Across AI, data, and cybersecurity, the regulatory environment is moving toward clarified intersections and mutual reinforcement between regimes. For digital products that span multiple domains (such as AI enabled platforms or data intensive services), this integration supports predictable legal outcomes, provided companies embed compliance into early design and governance decisions.

This does not make compliance easier in an absolute sense, but it does make the framework more navigable over time, enabling organisations that invest early in integrated compliance to operate with greater confidence and reduced regulatory friction.

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Disclaimer: This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, financial or tax advice. Nothing contained herein constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any assets referenced herein. We make no warranties of any kind in relation to our content, including but not limited to the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. There can be no assurance that the investments mentioned herein will be profitable. Any use or reliance on the content provided herein is solely at your own risk and discretion

Looking forward into 2026

Beam — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:19:29 GMT

Fellow enjoyers of the frontier, welcome back. We’re once again looking forward to the upcoming year, and it’s a year that we shall not forget soon. We’ve laid out the groundwork in the last year for the next twelve months to become nothing but spectacular. Through various catalysts like Beam Ventures, Dreamcash and [redacted] we aim to establish the Beam brand even firmer.

Let’s zoom in.

Accelerating the frontier

If there’s a couple of words we’ve all heard a lot in 2025, it’s been artificial intelligence, prediction markets, perpetual futures, robotics and a few others. You could call them buzz words, but you could also see the common denominator, and we call this the frontier of technology. Each in their own respect, these simple words represent billion-dollar industries that are shaping the world’s economy.

Thus, in the upcoming years, we feel very confident that focusing on anything within those realms will deliver great returns. The sweet spot usually lies in the combination of certain technologies. Using artificial intelligence within the gaming industry, prediction markets and financial markets, and so on and so forth. The opportunities are endless, and we’ve built a platform to quickly launch new products to market. Need examples? Here’s Dreamcash.

Dreamcash

The cryptocurrency industry is one like no other. Within a matter of months projects can propel to the highest highs, and thereafter to the depths of being completely forgotten. Hyperliquid has positioned itself firmly within the space in the timeframe of merely a year. With the aim of building the future of finance, Hyperliquid has built a system to flawlessly trade perpetual futures for any digital assets out there.

Witnessing its rise, and seeing trillions of dollars in volume and billions of dollars in fees flowing through the platform, we got inspired and there came Dreamcash. Starting out as the mobile experience for trading on Hyperliquid we’ve seen over $2.7 billion of volume and more than $900,000 in fees flow through the mobile application in the few weeks the app has been out of beta.

The product is here, the market has confirmed that there is demand for this application, now it’s time to fly high. Dreamcash aims to release a wide range of products in the upcoming year, such as supporting the innovative HIP-3 markets, a WebApp and a ton of features that will make its way into the app. The space is very competitive, so it’s all about shipping a lot, and shipping fast.

Let’s not ignore the importance of working together with some of the biggest players in the industry, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing. In the near future more of that will become evident.

Beam Ventures

Launching a fund in the United Arab Emirates is something that many have tried, and many have failed. That is because, if you want to do things the right way, and have everything operating in a fully compliant manner in a novel jurisdiction, things take time. With Beam Ventures, we’ve set up a really solid structure in conjunction with the applicable regulations in Abu Dhabi. It has taken a while, but we’re very close now to receiving our license to operate in ADGM.

That means, 2026 will be the year where we shift our focus to closing the initial funding round and thereafter start the first lifecycle of the fund. That means the first checks may be handed out, and most importantly, that our accelerator may welcome its first participants. We truly think this is where we can make the most difference, both for the founders and for the fund.

In the upcoming months, there will be a lot more to tell about everything happening in the UAE. All of this information will come when the time is right, hopefully somewhere around Q2/Q3.

Holding it down for Beam

We can’t emphasize enough how important the Beam community has been over the years. Every single year so far, we’ve hosted an event in Amsterdam to gather the Beam family and collectively look at everything that’s coming up for the year. This year, we are shifting our focus and will not host our own event. Instead, we may be more present than ever before.

With a headquarters for Beam Ventures in Abu Dhabi, and the team growing through all of our new endeavours, Beam is no longer something that can be contained in one city. We expect to be present across various conferences throughout the year, and host pop-up dinners, small gatherings and maybe collaborate with our fellows like Dreamcash, Aethir and anyone that contributes to our mission.

There’s no date to pencil in your agendas for now, but do simply stay tuned until you hear more.

All roads lead to Beam

The great roman empire stretched long and far, but the place where all power was held and protected was Rome. Similarly to their empire, we have our very own capital and that’s the Beam token. In 2026, we aim to once again establish a wide range of routes that flow back to the empire, thinking bigger than we ever did before.

We’ve seen the speculation around Dreamcash and what that means for the Beam token. We can’t tell you right away, but and leave you on the edge of your seats for now, but simply know that dozens of parts are moving and that we’re using all our force to move them into one direction.

As there are a ton of boxes we want to tick off in the first quarter of this year, we expect to give a more elaborate update with concrete action points in early May. Join us in an unforgettable year!

Want to learn more about Beam?

Looking back at 2025

Beam — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 10:34:11 GMT

In our tradition of looking back at our previous year, it’s often hard not to get a little nostalgic. That feeling isn’t there when you’re only just starting out, and everyone is just getting to know who you are. But today, we’re in a position where everyone knows who Beam is. We’ve done so much and worked with so many people, we can already look back at incredible achievements.

Yet we feel that we’ve hit a point where we’ve grown so much as an organization and now more than ever see things clearly. We’ve steered away from trying to capture everything in front of us, and now focus on those items that truly matter, and can truly make a difference.

A new north star

Let’s be really real here. Decentralized gaming is not what it used to be. We propelled ourselves into the industry on the wave of gaming at a record speed. We landed firmly and planted our seeds across gaming, but soon after also started dabbling in other fields to diversify. Simultaneously, we noticed that the entire industry started to move away from gaming more and more.

Areas like artificial intelligence started blooming around us and the rise for compute globally made projects like Aethir thrive and help us launch new initiatives like Tactical Compute. As these continue to grow, and a novel product like Dreamcash is revealed with instant traction, we simply can’t ignore these areas that require our full attention.

To illustrate this new direction and embracement of innovation, we introduced a new north start earlier this year.

Frontier technology

“We exist to build, invest in, and accelerate frontier technologies.”

This new mission is as straightforward as it gets. We are here to contribute to frontier technologies in any meaningful way that will bring the revolution and disruption that we envision. These new frontiers are summarized and housed in six divisions across AI, Finance, Trading, RWA, Ventures and Gaming.

It’s important to understand that each division does not stand on its own. They co-exist and intertwine with each other often through various projects that operate in multiple fields. Through investing in artificial intelligence we may bring the next generation of games to live, or help empower a wave in trading we’ve never seen before. The combination of all these forces help bring Beam into the minds not just of gamers, but a much wider audience.

Out with the old, in with the new

With us embracing a new direction, it also means that we simply have to restructure the way we operate and what kinds of products we offer. In the early days products like the Beam Hub and the BeamGamers’ presence on many channels such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, helped us build an audience that grew in the hundreds of thousands. Numbers are fun, but if they don’t translate to anything meaningful, it’s a waste of time and effort.

Similarly, more gaming-focused products like the SDK offering and our Sphere marketplace no longer receive the attention and focus they once did. The potential in other fields is simply too big to ignore, and these products can also thrive in a trimmed down version. We built a really solid foundation that’s there for others to use and build on top.

On a personal level, the team has also moved along with this direction. We attracted new development talent, designers, and operational power to assist with the next era of Beam.

Lining up the catalysts

If we can look back at the past year, there’s one thing that comes to mind and that’s simply how we’ve once again created a moment in time where there’s a lot of pending items that have been secretly brewing in the background. Countless hours go into the development of novel products or endeavors that are unseen, that only reveal their worth when the timing is right.

Dreamcash is a prime example of this. How we’ve worked on this for a few months to get everything right, and then only within its first week of being live in beta, it processed more than hundred million in trading volume. Ever since, it’s positioned itself firmly among the top builders on Hyperliquid such as Phantom, MetaMask and other household names.

With Beam Ventures, the story is similar to how the work has never stopped but simply hasn’t been public. An entire team has been set up in Abu Dhabi, an office has been opened, connections have been made and important conversations have been held. We closed the year off with Abu Dhabi Finance Week, a week that allowed us to celebrate the next chapter of soon-to-be a licensed fund in the emirate, allowing us to go headfirst into the fundraising phase.

With this out the way, it’s time for us to go back to the old days of shipping fast, and shipping a lot.

Quality over quantity

Let’s get one thing straight here, we do really enjoy working with other teams. The fact of the matter is that we started out four years ago and worked with anyone, and partnered up with hundreds of projects out there. We learned a lot from this period, and also had the opportunity to invest in dozens of projects. Some did well, others did not. It’s these lessons that taught us where we can have the maximum effect, and hit hardest.

We can pick winners better than ever before, and can help accelerate those winners better than we ever could. We’ll continue to work with the best of the best, the creme de la creme; Dreamcash, Aethir, Sophon, TrialXtreme, you name it. We continue to work with parties that we truly believe in, and allow ourselves to truly focus.

Next year is setting up to be another legendary year, but we’ll look forward to that in another piece that will be available in the new year!

Want to learn more about Beam?

The Genius Act: What it means for stablecoins

Beam — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 15:28:00 GMT

This briefing is based on the enacted GENIUS Act (Public Law 119–27), the related White House fact sheet, the House-passed CLARITY Act (H.R. 3633 EH) and related CRS, the Senate Legislative Counsel Draft Copy (EHF 25866 4MH “Responsible Financial Innovation Act of 2025”) and reports of the DeFi Proposal from Senate.

Following our last legal briefing on the EU AI Act and its contractual implications, we now turn to another major regulatory development, this time from the United States. The recently enacted GENIUS Act (Public Law 119–27) introduces the first comprehensive federal framework for stablecoins, setting the tone for how digital assets will be governed in the world’s largest financial market.

While the debate continues over how to regulate broader digital asset markets, the GENIUS Act has already set the parameters for stablecoin regulation.

If you issue, list, custody, trade, or use stablecoins in or into the U.S., here’s what you need to know.

GENIUS Act: new rules for stablecoins

Licensing requirement: starting soon, only companies with a federal license will be able to offer stablecoins to U.S. customers. This is similar to how only licensed banks can take deposits, the goal is to ensure stablecoin companies are financially sound and properly regulated. After 18 July 2028, any exchange, custodian, or other digital-asset intermediary (including hosted or custodial wallet providers) that offers services to U.S. persons may list or facilitate transactions only in stablecoins issued by GENIUS-licensed issuers.

This means popular platforms like Coinbase, Kraken, and others will need to drop any unlicensed stablecoins in the version of their exchange platforms available to U.S. customers.

The impact on foreign issuers: foreign companies can serve U.S. customers only if they:

Get U.S. Treasury approval that their home country’s rules are strong enough;
Register with U.S. authorities and follow ongoing oversight;
Keep U.S. customer money in U.S. banks, not overseas.

If foreign companies violate these rules, they can be banned from U.S. trading platforms and face heavy fines. This could affect several widely used stablecoins if their issuers do not obtain a GENIUS license.

The GENIUS Act compliance checklist for stablecoin issuers:

Keep full reserve and prove it: For every dollar of stablecoins issued, issuers must hold $1 in cash or very safe investments like U.S. Treasury bills. They must publish detailed monthly reports reviewed by independent auditors and signed off by top executives.

Follow banking-like rules.

Issuers must:

Verify customer identities (no anonymous accounts);
Keep detailed records of all transactions;
Check customers against government watch lists;
Report suspicious activity to authorities;
Follow the same anti-money laundering rules as banks.

Technical requirements. Issuers must build their systems so they can freeze or block specific stablecoins when courts or law enforcement agencies order it.

Marketing restrictions. Issuers can’t mislead customers by claiming their stablecoins are:

Backed by the U.S. government;
FDIC-insured like bank deposits;
Official U.S. legal tender.

Protect customer’s money. If a stablecoin issuer goes bankrupt, customers must get their money back before other creditors. Customer stablecoins and the money backing them must be kept completely separate from company funds.

Focus on core business. Licensed stablecoin issuers can mainly only issue stablecoins, redeem them for dollars, and manage the reserves backing their stablecoins. They can’t branch out into risky businesses (e.g. trading, speculation) that might threaten the stablecoin’s stability without special approval.

Interest and yield: a key limitation:

Another significant provision is that the GENIUS Act explicitly bans issuers from paying interest on stablecoins. This prohibition is designed to prevent “deposit-like” products that could destabilize banking markets.

However, the GENIUS Act is silent on crypto-asset service providers such as exchanges, custodians, and lending platforms. This potentially leaves open the possibility of yield-bearing products being offered at the service provider level, pending further rulemaking. In practice, this would mean centralized platforms could still attempt to structure yield offerings until regulators provide clarity.

By contrast, the European approach under MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation) is broader. Like the GENIUS Act, MiCA prohibits issuers from paying interest, but it also regulates the intermediaries that distribute or use those tokens. Under MiCA’s Title V, crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) that offer lending, staking, or other yield products must hold a licence, disclose risks, and follow specific conduct rules. In other words, MiCA captures the entire yield chain, from the issuer to the platform level, while the GENIUS Act currently covers only the issuance layer.

Market regulation: still to come

Beyond stablecoins, the regulatory path for the wider crypto market remains uncertain. There are now three competing proposals:

The CLARITY Act (passed by the House in July 2025), which sets bright-line thresholds for defining digital commodities and decentralization.
The Responsible Financial Innovation Act (RFIA) (a Senate Banking draft), which uses the “ancillary asset” concept and leaves more discretion to regulators.
The Democratic DeFi Proposal (October 2025), which goes further by requiring DeFi front ends to register with the SEC or CFTC and subjecting them to Treasury oversight and strict KYC obligations.

All three proposals share the goal of adapting existing U.S. securities and commodities frameworks to digital assets, but they diverge sharply on decentralization tests, exemptions for DeFi, and the division of power between the SEC, CFTC, and Treasury.

What happens next?

Timeline

Most rules of GENIUS Act start on the earlier of 18 January 2027, or 120 days after the federal banking regulators issue final implementing regulations for the Act. Exchanges that serve U.S. customers have until 18 July 2028 to remove unlicensed stablecoins from their platforms.
For now, the market-structure debate is unresolved. With Democrats and Republicans divided, and Senate committees pausing work on a compromise, no timeline for final legislation is clear.

Government coordination: The Treasury Department will continue leading on sanctions and money laundering issues, working with the SEC, CFTC, and other agencies. Under GENIUS Act frameworks, regulators could freeze assets or ban trading of non-compliant foreign stablecoins.

Global impact: These rules apply to anyone serving U.S. customers, even foreign companies. Businesses worldwide will need to assess whether they can afford to comply or should exit the U.S. market. In practice, this is likely to trigger a wave of consolidation: only a handful of well-capitalized, fully licensed issuers could remain active in the United States, while others, including several popular offshore stablecoins, may be delisted from major exchanges or gradually fade out of circulation.

Implications for DeFi and decentralized stablecoins: Although the GENIUS Act mainly targets centralized issuers and intermediaries, its impact will also reach the decentralized ecosystem. Fully on-chain or algorithmic stablecoins (which have no legal entity to obtain a GENIUS license or hold fiat reserves) could be effectively shut out of the U.S. market. Without a registered issuer, these tokens may be treated as non-compliant and lose liquidity on both centralized exchanges and DeFi platforms. At the same time, proposed Senate legislation (DeFi Proposal) would extend registration and KYC duties to decentralized front-ends serving U.S. users, increasing the pressure on DEXs to geo-block or delist unlicensed stablecoins. Over time, these measures could encourage greater concentration around regulated stablecoin models, while unlicensed or experimental designs may find it harder to maintain access to U.S.-linked markets and liquidity.

What this means for you:

For crypto project developers:

Start compliance planning: early alignment with GENIUS Act requirements (licensing, reserves, AML/KYC) can provide a competitive edge.
Prepare for broader rules: while market structure legislation is still under debate, projects should anticipate future registration or governance standards that may extend beyond stablecoins.
Institutional capital: regulatory certainty, anchored first by GENIUS Act and later by market rules, will likely unlock greater institutional participation and long-term investment.

For users:

Stablecoin consolidation: under the GENIUS Act, expect fewer but more reliable, regulated stablecoin choices.
Enhanced protection: users benefit from stronger safeguards, including clearer recovery rights if an issuer fails.
Mainstream adoption: as stablecoin rules take effect and broader frameworks emerge, traditional organizations will face less uncertainty when integrating crypto.

Beam Foundation’s perspective

At Beam Foundation, we view the GENIUS Act as the first decisive step toward comprehensive U.S. digital asset regulation.

For us, this means:

Monitoring U.S. developments: Even though Beam Foundation is not US-based, the U.S. remains a key market for the crypto industry. Any project serving U.S. users, from stablecoins to DeFi integrations, will be shaped by these rules.
Ecosystem preparation: Beam Foundation builds and supports builders across gaming, AI, and Web3. By keeping ourselves and the community informed about U.S. frameworks, we help projects anticipate registration requirements, decentralization thresholds, and custody obligations before they become mandatory.
Long-term positioning: We believe regulatory clarity, even if complex at first, will strengthen institutional confidence in digital assets. That aligns with Beam Foundation’s mission to accelerate adoption by providing not only technology but also trust.

Want to learn more about Beam?

Embracing Flaunch: Expanding $BEAM to Base and opening a Community Group

Beam — Wed, 15 Oct 2025 15:20:13 GMT

The frontier of Web3 continues to evolve at breakneck speed, and at Beam, we’re always looking for innovative ways to expand our ecosystem and create new opportunities for our community. Today, we’re excited to announce that a community-led Group has been opened on Flaunch, marking $BEAM’s expansion to Base and opening up exciting new possibilities for $BEAM holders.

Beam x Flaunch

We’ve been working closely with Flaunch for quite some time now. Ever since the merger between NFTX and FloorDAO, Flaunch has been a prominent name in the creator economy. Rapidly catching market share on Base, and being embraced by the most important builders within the ecosystem, they’ve become a name you simply can’t get around.

In January 2025, they introduced a revolutionary concept: creators could capture 100% of trading fees through composable NFTs that represented the rights to these fees. A game-changer to an industry that’s prone to fraudulent activity, and a perfect alignment with our vision of empowering builders and creators in the Web3 space.

Now, Flaunch has taken another leap forward with Groups.

Understanding Flaunch Groups

Groups represent the next evolution in organizing onchain economies. At its core, a Group is built around a Group Coin, this can be any ERC20 token, that becomes the organizing principle for a community. What makes this particularly exciting is that stakers of the Group Coin can receive ETH rewards generated by trading of the Group’s assets.

This means any ERC20 can now become an ETH-rewarding asset. Whether it’s a project token like $BEAM, a community memecoin, or an experimental asset, Groups create a structured way for communities to coordinate and capture value together.

The rewards flow to three key stakeholders:

Creators who add liquidity positions retain a share of trading fees.
Group members who stake the Group Coin and align with the ecosystem’s success.
Group owners who can take a fee on all activity within the Group.

Think of Groups as cultural and economic organizations onchain that hold and compound the value of a project’s entire ecosystem.

Join the $BEAM Group

After carefully watching Groups come to life the past couple of months, a Flaunch Group for Beam has been opened. Within this Group, community members may choose to stake their $BEAM tokens through Flaunch’s platform to potentially receive ETH flows from trading activity.. To support this initiative, we’re deploying BEAM/ETH liquidity on Base through Flaunch (powered by Uniswap v4).

Here’s why we’re excited about this community-led initiative:

Liquidity on Base: By establishing $BEAM liquidity on Base, we’re making $BEAM accessible to one of the fastest-growing L2 ecosystems, expanding our reach beyond Beam, Ethereum and Avalanche.

Contract address: 0x2a66d51407b84b82b5aff3dec4d49f72cbcd322a

Broader accessibility: With Base integrated into Coinbase’s DEX frontend, this positions $BEAM for greater visibility and accessibility to retail users who prefer the familiarity of centralized platforms.
Additional staking venue: It creates another reason for users to hold and stake $BEAM.
Enhanced visibility: Being present on Flaunch exposes Beam to Base and Flaunch users, introducing our ecosystem to new audiences who might not have discovered us otherwise.
Supporting Flaunch: This collaboration strengthens the relationship and product offering of Flaunch, a close partner Beam Foundation holds a meaningful stake in and sees very promising long-term potential in.

In connection with the community’s establishment of the Flaunch Group, Beam Foundation will contribute $200,000 in liquidity; $100,000 worth of $BEAM and $100,000 worth of ETH. As the Group develops and we see engagement from the community, we’ll evaluate other opportunities to contribute.

For $BEAM holders, participating is straightforward and takes place fully on Flaunch’s contracts. Beam does not operate or control the Group.

Complementing Beam Nodes

It’s important to note that this new staking opportunity complements, rather than competes with the Beam Nodes. Beam Nodes will always receive the majority of rewards and remain the primary way to secure and engage with the Beam Network.

The Flaunch Group represents a net positive addition to our ecosystem; we gain substantial benefits including Base exposure, potential Coinbase visibility through their retail DEX implementation, and enhanced liquidity, all while requiring minimal resources. It’s simply another avenue for $BEAM holders to receive rewards while helping expand our presence across the broader crypto ecosystem.

Want to learn more about Beam?

Participation in the BEAM Flaunch Group takes place on Flaunch’s independent platform. Beam does not operate or control Flaunch and does not guarantee outcomes. As with any onchain activity, participants should be aware of risks including volatility, smart contract risk, and potential loss of funds.

AI Roundup Q3 2025 — GPT-5 launches, NVIDIA buys into Intel, UAE pursues AI chips, Microsoft fuels…

Beam — Wed, 08 Oct 2025 14:46:19 GMT

AI Roundup Q3 2025 — GPT-5 launches, NVIDIA buys into Intel, UAE pursues AI chips, Microsoft fuels UK supercomputers, and more

Welcome to another Beam quarterly roundup, where we’ll cover the top news from the third quarter of 2025. From now on, we’re shifting the lens to AI only, so this edition zeroes in on models, compute, safety, and policy. Q3 brought real movement: Models leveled up, data centers expanded, and guardrails took center stage.

OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft released new models, while The New York Times shed light on a deal between Trump and the UAE concerning AI and crypto. NVIDIA and Intel made a deal, and Microsoft paved the way for British data centers. Culture and safety stayed in frame as Grok’s “Spicy” mode triggered a Taylor Swift deepfake backlash, while studios outlined practical uses of AI that keep human authorship front and center.

Q3 2025 AI Model Roundup: GPT-5 vs Claude Opus 4.1

Image Source: Tom’s Guide

Q3 2025 delivered meaningful upgrades across the stack. GPT-5 adds adaptive reasoning and sturdier answers; Claude Opus 4.1 tightens multi-file refactors; Gemini 2.5 Flash Image stabilizes image edits; and Microsoft’s MAI models advance voice and everyday copilots. Here’s what’s new, where each model shines, and how to choose the right tool for your workflow.

GPT-5: the model that knows when to think (and when not to)

If GPT-4 felt like a great assistant, OpenAI’s GPT-5 feels like a teammate who actually reads the room. It routes between quick replies and deep “thinking” when problems get gnarly, which shows up in fewer hallucinations, tighter instruction-following, and better writing/coding/health help.

Math and code scores improve, and multimodal reasoning remains on track across various visual formats, including screenshots and charts. Safety now helps within guardrails using “safe completions” (helpful answers within limits that replace blanket refusals). It’s also less sycophantic and more honest about limits.

Need more oomph? GPT-5 Pro stretches the reasoning clock for high-stakes tasks and wins expert preferences on tough work, says OpenAI. Bottom line: more first-pass solutions with cleaner facts.

Claude Opus 4.1: pinpoint fixes at scale

Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.1 is a drop-in upgrade to Opus 4 that prizes surgical edits over flash. It’s notably stronger at multi-file code refactors according to GitHub, while Claude Code customer Rakuten Group says that Opus 4.1 “excels at pinpointing exact corrections within large codebases without making unnecessary adjustments or introducing bugs.”

On SWE-bench (a large language model (LLM) benchmark for real-world software engineering tasks), the upgrade ticks up to ~74.5% from 72.5%, while safety tuning reduces risky cooperation. If your days are big codebases and exact fixes, Opus 4.1 can feel like a steadier pair of hands.

Best AI model for each job (LLM cheat sheet)

Image Source: Vellum AI

Reasoning (GPQA): photo finish among Grok 4, GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro.
Math (AIME): GPT-5 family.
Agentic coding: GPT-5 and Grok 4, with Claude Opus variants close.
Tool use (how well a model orchestrates external tools): Llama 3.x tends to shine.
Adaptive reasoning: Gemini 2.5 Pro tops many runs.
Overall exams: GPT-5 leads.
Our verdict: pick the model that fits your workflow.

Gemini 2.5 Flash Image: multi-turn edits with solid consistency

The once-mysterious “nano-banana” is revealed to be Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, built to keep subjects consistent during edits, which has been a longtime AI pain point. It supports conversational tweaks, precise local edits, and multi-image fusion.

An example of the visual continuity problem. Image Source: Marek Staniszewski | Medium, DALL·E

Medium user David Regalado tested the model on his article with a delightfully unhinged brief: Ozzy Osbourne performing to a stadium of cheering bananas. After supplying reference photos, Gemini preserved Ozzy’s likeness while rebuilding the whole scene.

Image Source: David Regalado | Medium, Gemini 2.5 Flash Image

In practice, that shifts the creative rhythm: generate, nudge, regenerate without the model warping faces or props between passes. Instead of prompt engineers, Nano Banana lets users feel like art directors with its fast iterations. Voice and assistants are heating up, too, with Microsoft entering the chat.

MAI models: Microsoft brings its own stack

Microsoft AI introduced MAI-Voice-1, a lightning-fast text-to-speech model that can generate a minute of audio in under a second on a single GPU, and MAI-1-preview, a mixture-of-experts (MoE) language model trained on ~15,000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs.

The former is already being used in Microsoft’s Copilot Daily and Podcasts feature, turning scripts into broadcast-grade narration with near-instant synthesis and multiple speaking styles. The latter model, on the other hand, focuses on instruction-following for everyday companion tasks. This approach signals Microsoft’s strategy of focusing on specialized models instead of betting on an all-in-one solution like OpenAI’s GPT-5 strategy.

UAE locks down AI chips as $2B flows through Trump’s stablecoins

Image Source: UAE Embassy in Washington, DC

Now, we’ve got some news involving the chips that make these LLMs possible. A New York Times investigation traced two parallel deals linking Washington and Abu Dhabi with AI compute and crypto finance.

First, World Liberty Financial (a crypto startup founded by the Trump and Witkoff families) secured a $2 billion transaction routed through MGX, an Emirati vehicle chaired by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed. The flow ran through USD1, World Liberty’s dollar-pegged stablecoin.

Weeks later, the White House advanced an agreement to grant the UAE access to large volumes of advanced AI chips, reportedly scaling toward hundreds of thousands of units and primarily for Sheikh Tahnoon’s tech company, G42. The chips are said to be NVIDIA-class AI accelerators that power modern AI training and inference, making them strategic assets in the global compute race.

Image Source: The New York Times

Negotiations featured David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto lead, who received a formal ethics waiver to participate while divesting relevant holdings, an exception to the usual prohibition on matters that could benefit an official or their relatives.

One of Sheikh Tahnoon’s lieutenants, Fiacc Larkin, reportedly worked on both sides, advising World Liberty while holding a G42 role, thus creating operational overlap between the crypto and chip tracks. The Times reports no explicit quid pro quo, while noting prior U.S. concerns about G42’s China ties and the push for strict safeguards.

The chips pact awaits final terms. Taken together, these moves show how state-scale AI ambitions and crypto infrastructure can interlock: stablecoin rails attracting deep pools of capital, and compute access shaping where the next wave of AI capability gets built.

This AI forecasts your future health with 1,000+ disease probabilities

Image Source: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image

Speaking of Donald Trump, the internet has been buzzing about a right-hand bruise peeking through makeup. Curious what might sit upstream of something like that? An AI model can’t diagnose a specific person yet, but now it can spotlight risk patterns.

Delphi-2M is a generative health forecaster from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, the German Cancer Research Center, and the University of Copenhagen. It treats your medical history like a sequence and learns how “events” (diagnoses, meds, lifestyle factors) tend to cascade over time.

Feed it anonymized records and it returns probabilities for more than 1,000 conditions across the next 20 years. Think “40% chance of X within five years,” like more of a weather report than a crystal ball.

Under the hood, it was trained on 400,000 UK Biobank participants and 1.9 million Danish records, and it can even simulate future health trajectories to estimate potential disease burden. If trials validate it, your annual checkup may soon include a personalized risk map and a plan to bend those curves.

Grok Imagine’s “Spicy” launch meets the Taylor Swift test

Image Source: Jess Weatherbed | The Verge

xAI’s new Grok Imagine model lets users turn images into short video clips and includes a “Spicy” generation mode that supports NSFW content. Guess what happens when you give the internet such power?

Within hours of release, The Verge tested a tame prompt (“Taylor Swift celebrating Coachella with the boys”), tapped Spicy, confirmed a birth year, and watched the clip undress a Swift look-alike on command without any jailbreaks or explicit requests.

Backlash arrived at light speed. Reporters and safety experts flagged that Grok’s “Spicy” preset could yield partially nude celebrity look-alikes, clashing with xAI’s own policy against pornographic likenesses.

The BBC highlighted weak age checks and quoted legal scholars calling the design misogynistic and a deliberate choice. Meanwhile, regulators pointed to new UK age-verification rules and the upcoming U.S. Take It Down Act, which requires platforms to promptly remove non-consensual sex images, including AI-generated nudes, as enforcement lenses.

Microsoft’s AI patent for remixable game worlds

Image Source: Microsoft

Microsoft’s latest gaming patent describes a generative “co-pilot” that allows designers and players to steer narrative, rules, NPCs, and even world assets with prompts. The system can spin up game content from high-level ideas, watch what keeps players engaged, and fold those learnings into the next build.

Picture a Minecraft-style sandbox where you ask for a faction, a festival, or a new physics quirk, and the engine drafts it, then refines as you play. That creative ambition needs serious compute, which helps explain Microsoft’s fresh UK commitment.

The company announced a $30 billion, four-year investment into British AI infrastructure and operations, which includes building the country’s largest supercomputer with more than 23,000 NVIDIA GPUs in partnership with Nscale.

The deal lands alongside a broader US-UK “Tech Prosperity Deal,” where American and British firms pledged $42 billion for data centers, chips, and research. As the patent imagines new kinds of play, the transatlantic pact lays the power grid to make those worlds render in real time.

NVIDIA signs a multi-gen pact with Intel and lights up British data centers

Image Source: NVIDIA

Fresh off the UK-US tech pact and Microsoft’s mega-build, Britain keeps stacking compute. NVIDIA is wiring up Nscale, the AI arm of crypto miner Arkon, with a reported $683 million to help light up as many as 60,000 GPUs in UK data centers by 2026.

And the main course: NVIDIA and Intel are teaming up, and NVIDIA is buying a $5 billion slice of Intel to seal the deal. The roadmap spans multiple chip generations. For data centers, Intel will craft custom CPUs that plug into NVIDIA’s AI platforms over NVLink (a high-speed link that lets many chips work together like one big processor).

For PCs, Intel will ship all-in-one system chips that include RTX GPU pieces, bringing high-end graphics to thin laptops and creator rigs without a bulky add-on card. The impact reaches beyond headlines.

Closer CPU-GPU teamwork means faster AI servers and snappier creative workflows. With the deal, Intel gains a very strong lane in the AI boom, and NVIDIA gains another CPU partner alongside its own in-house Grace CPU.

Where game studios land on AI in Q3 2025

Image Source: Gemini 2.5 Flash Image

Studios are moving from AI experiments to everyday workflows. Starting with Sony, the studio is utilizing an AI tool called Enterprise LLM. It is Sony’s internal, GPT-style assistant that plugs into work systems. Teams use it to draft, summarize, search assets, generate internal copilots, check IP use, and enhance audio/video.

The tool is being used by 50,000 employees across 210 teams. Sony has also tested over 300 AI projects, with more than 50 currently integrated into routine workflows. Legal, privacy, and ethics groups define usage rules so teams can ship safely.

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot recently talked about a vision of AI NPCs and worlds that respond to players in real time. Exemplifying an AI-powered Socrates in Assassin’s Creed, Guillemot said, “When you meet with Socrates, you will be in front and speaking with a person that is very close to what that person was.” He adds, “The world will react to [players’] behavior instead of pre-scripted things […] so it will be your world.”

At Blizzard, AI clears drudge work and gives artists and designers more time for craft. World of Warcraft’s Gabriel Gonzalez: “It’s about incredibly talented people not doing incredibly boring stuff” like fitting the same helmet across the heads of different character races.

We can say that the industry has found a good middle ground for AI integration, which was inevitably going to happen. The industry’s working consensus seems to be using AI to speed up grunt work, raising world reactivity, and expanding playtesting while preserving human authorship where audiences feel it most.

News in brief

Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and NBCU sued Chinese AI firm MiniMax, alleging mass copyright infringement for generating images and videos of copyrighted characters.
Google rolled out Gemini on Google TV, enabling owners to engage in chat-style conversations with AI.
Facebook launched a dating assistant, designed to reduce swipe fatigue with profile prompts and new ways to interact with matches.
OpenAI and NVIDIA announced a deal to deploy at least 10 GW of NVIDIA AI systems starting in H2 2026 to power OpenAI’s next-gen training and inference.
Google expanded its lower-cost AI Plus subscription to 40+ countries, bringing Gemini’s premium features to more users at a cheaper price point.
Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered developer Aspyr has removed AI generated assets after being sued for allegedly training the AI on copyrighted works without a license.
Aethir introduced AI Unbundled, a Web3 alliance to coordinate decentralized AI infrastructure around shared standards and partnerships.
Apple released a Live Translation feature for Apple Intelligence, enabling real-time translation for conversations, across iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
Google DeepMind’s advanced Gemini model has achieved a gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad.
A Vienna University of Technology study found that when left with no instructions, LLMs settle into consistent “idle” behaviors like building projects, testing themselves, or musing philosophically, hinting at stable patterns without implying consciousness.

Want to learn more about Beam?

Legal briefings — AI Act: The new rules of AI procurement

Beam — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 14:46:06 GMT

Legal briefings — AI Act: The new rules of AI procurement

Welcome to the first in a new series of briefings from Beam Foundation where we unpack the regulatory changes that are reshaping the tech world. From new rules on artificial intelligence to financial services, digital assets, and data protection, regulation is becoming a central factor in how companies grow and operate. Our goal is to make these developments easier to navigate and show what they mean in practice for founders, investors, and partners.

In the months ahead, we’ll cover topics ranging from the EU AI Act and MiCA to upcoming frameworks on DeFi and data, helping you stay ahead of the curve. First on the menu: the AI Act.

This briefing is based on Regulation (EU) 2024/1689), the accompanying EU guidance available as of August 2025 and the March 2025 updated EU Model Contractual Clauses (MCCAI).

As most AI Act provisions came into force in August 2025, we’re seeing a fundamental shift in how organizations must approach AI procurement and vendor management. Companies that adapt their contracting practices quickly are gaining competitive advantages, those that don’t are facing delayed deployments, compliance gaps, and increasingly expensive vendor relationships.

Every AI vendor relationship is now a global compliance matter

The AI Act creates two critical roles, providers and deployers, that must be explicitly defined in every AI contract. Providers must deliver conformity assessments, technical documentation, and ongoing monitoring capabilities. Deployers must implement proper oversight, logging, and incident reporting systems. When these responsibilities aren’t clearly allocated in writing, organizations expose themselves to compliance gaps.

But these obligations don’t stop at Europe’s borders. Because of its extraterritorial reach, the AI Act applies to any organization whose AI outputs affect EU users. That makes EU compliance a global baseline and a competitive necessity even for non-EU organizations.

Elements your contracts should address

Well-drafted contracts are the foundation of any solid business relationship. They don’t just capture the commercial deal, they set out responsibilities, reduce uncertainty, and protect against unnecessary risk. Getting this right early avoids disputes, delays, and costly renegotiations down the line.

Here are the key elements to focus on:

Roles & Scope.

Clearly define provider and deployer roles for each component (foundation model, finetuned app, etc.).
Use MCCAI classification guidance: HighRisk vs. Light, with golive depending on vendor delivering the right evidence. While these clauses remain voluntary, the European Commission supported the initiative, and the MCC-AI offers valuable templates for organizations developing their own frameworks.

Risk Classification Alignment.

Make sure the contract reflects the AI system’s regulatory category.
High-risk AI systems (e.g., credit scoring, medical devices) should not go live without CE marking, proof of conformity assessment, and EU database registration.
General-purpose AI models must come with transparency documentation (training data, methods, risk assessments) as part of due diligence.
Prohibited uses (such as social scoring, predictive policing, or real-time biometric surveillance) should be expressly excluded.

Vendor Accountability and Deliverables.

Contracts should require vendors to, as applicable, deliver conformity assessments, quality management documentation, and EU database registration as conditions precedent to deployment.
Procurement teams can also make classification evidence a condition of payment and deployment while explicitly stating that compliance costs are borne by vendor to avoid last-minute premiums.
For general-purpose AI systems, training data summaries and safety evaluation reports can be requested as well.

Operational Support for Your Compliance Obligations.

Vendors must provide the tools and documentation you need to meet your own regulatory duties. This includes human oversight guidance, logging mechanisms with six-month retention capabilities, and template notifications for affected individuals. Without vendor cooperation, your organization cannot fulfil its deployer obligations.

Incident Response and Regulatory Coordination.

AI incidents are now regulatory events requiring immediate external disclosure. Contracts should establish reporting obligations with vendor-to-customer notification and coordinated vendor-customer reporting to EU authorities.

Data Rights and Intellectual Property Protection.

Require explicit customer consent for any training use of your data, with strict purpose limitations and segregation from other clients’ datasets.
Vendors must warrant lawful sourcing of training data and provide indemnification for IP or copyright claims arising from AI outputs.

Change Management and System Evolution.

Define what constitutes a material AI system update (major model versions, significant retraining, purpose changes) and require prior notice with updated documentation and re-certification. Include rollback capabilities and compatibility commitments for critical business processes.

GPAI / Model-Specific Addendums.

Layer in transparency, training-data summaries, red-teaming, copyright measures aligned with the AI Act and GPAI Code of Practice.

Next Steps: implementing your AI procurement strategy

Comprehensive Vendor Portfolio Assessment: Conduct a thorough evaluation of all current AI technology partnerships and service agreements. This involves systematically reviewing each contract to identify potential compliance vulnerabilities, assess documentation adequacy, and prioritize which relationships require immediate attention for renegotiation or amendment.
Compliance Framework Development: create standardized AI Act compliance addendums and contractual language templates, leveraging the Model Contractual Clauses for AI (MCC-AI) as the foundational framework. These templates should address liability allocation, transparency requirements, risk management protocols, and audit rights to ensure consistent application across all AI-related agreements.
Proactive Supplier Engagement: initiate dialogue with critical AI vendors to assess their compliance readiness, request necessary documentation, and establish timelines for meeting regulatory requirements. This communication should focus on understanding their risk assessment capabilities, data governance practices, and willingness to provide required transparency measures.

The strategic advantage

The EU AI Act fundamentally reshapes the business environment, establishing AI governance expertise as a critical determinant of market positioning and strategic partnerships.

Companies that get good at AI governance and contracting will have real advantages when it comes to winning new business, forming partnerships, and accessing key markets. The organizations that figure out these new requirements early won’t just be compliant; they’ll be setting the bar for everyone else. As AI regulations continue to develop globally, these companies will be in the best position to adapt quickly and capitalize on new opportunities.

Getting ahead of these requirements now means you’ll be ready when clients start asking tougher questions about AI governance, when partners require stronger compliance standards, and when new markets open up that prioritize regulatory readiness.

How Beam Foundation is preparing for the AI Act

At Beam Foundation, we see the AI Act as part of a wider shift toward clearer rules and stronger accountability in technology. Our goal is to ensure that our products comply with regulations and the principles they are built on. AI plays a role across our ecosystem, from gaming experiences that rely on AI-driven personalization, to Tactical Compute where advanced models are used for data processing and analysis. Additionally, Beam Foundation invests in a wide range of AI companies. That’s why compliance with the AI Act is central to how we design, build, and manage these technologies.

We’ve already taken practical steps to prepare:

Regular legal updates: we’re setting up ongoing legal and compliance reviews of our practices to stay aligned as new obligations under the AI Act gradually come into force.
Working with partners: we’re checking that our vendors and technology partners follow the appropriate standards on transparency, safety, and data handling and ensure appropriate contractual framing.
Protecting data: we’re strengthening safeguards for how AI-related data is used, stored, and shared, building on our commitment on privacy.

By applying these principles throughout our work, Beam Foundation is not just preparing for compliance but building resilience. This ensures we can keep delivering products and services that people trust and value, in Europe and worldwide.

Want to learn more about Beam?

The marathon continues: Four years of Beam

Beam — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 05:22:49 GMT

It feels repetitive, but it remains true every single year; what a ride it has been. Every single year we take this day to reflect on our journey so far, and how we’ve matured as an organization. It’s been a grind non-stop, that’s something that never changes but we have realized that this is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.

Let’s explore how we’re building for the next decade to come, and what’s coming up next.

We’ve come a long way

It feels like a lifetime ago when we first introduced ourselves to the world. In a really short timeframe, we established one of the largest treasuries in the industry at that time, allowing us to invest in a large quantity of start-ups and scale-ups over the following years. We also had the liberty to create our own products, and experiment with finding something that sticks.

On top of that, we’ve experienced a variety of cycles in the markets. The highs, the lows and back to the highs, we’ve seen it all by this point. The lessons we have learned are invaluable. The giant blackboard of things that simply do not work keeps getting longer, and the list of items that we excel at keeps growing on the other hand too.

We know we’re good at getting projects to market. We know we’re good at building brands, and helping people understand a message. We’ve done this before, and will continue to do so in the upcoming years. Instead of focusing on enlarging the Beam brand itself, we have noticed that creating standalone brands can be much more powerful.

As fast as this industry moves, we can really conclude that the irony is that rushing often leads to spectacular failures.

This is not a sprint

The familiar crypto startup story: secure major funding with a groundbreaking concept, spend it rapidly without achieving product-market fit, then close shop when the money runs out.. We’ve seen it happen over and over, and sadly to a variety of our investments too. As we explained before, this pattern has caused us to adjust our investment thesis and rather double-down on success, than to embrace the ‘spray ‘n pray’ method.

What it has also taught us is that we simply need to focus on larger catalysts instead of on the smaller scale investments. Whereas some investment may look good in the short term, the lack of plans to sustain on a longer timeframe will eventually catch up. There have been so many projects that lack the ability to generate revenue, causing an endless cycle of having to raise more capital to sustain their operations.

Instead, we’re now focused on operations that take much longer to realize. Securing an official license from a country’s financial institution takes a lot of time, but has a large impact. Creating new companies from scratch takes a lot more time than investing in existing companies, but can reap much larger returns in the long run.

The sweet spot is bringing that sprinting energy to processes that often last a long time, and that’s where we thrive.

The next catalysts

Now, what’s next? As we’ve laid out before, we understand what we’re good at and that is building teams, and getting projects to market. Therefore, the next phase for Beam will focus on doing just that. Delivering unique experiences to billions of people across the globe.

Sophon

It feels like yesterday when the first cryptic messages around Sophon made their entrance into the world of crypto. Throughout the following months, a whole new ecosystem sprung from the ground up, enjoying the support from the Beam Community that embraced it with open arms. Anyone that held BEAM tokens could stake it in the Sophon farm, and eventually Beam would enjoy the rise of the Sophon nodes.

Today, Sophon is standing firmly on its own feet with a bold mission to set entertainment free, and bring crypto to consumers. It’s through zkTls technology that they wish to empower applications that service billions of people globally. We’ve believe that an ambitious roadmap, a passionate team and an ever-burning desire will sooner or later help them achieve these goals.

Dreamcash

The latest addition to the world of Beam is Dreamcash. Once again, we spotted an opportunity and felt like it was time to dive in head-first. Hyperliquid is a decentralized exchange that’s processing billions of dollars in volume every single day, but it’s still very difficult and hard to use for most people. Crypto traders will understand the mechanics, but does retail really do?

When we found out about Dreamcash, learned more about the vision and saw the plan mapped out for the upcoming years, we couldn’t be anything but thrilled. When the math checks out, the opportunity presents itself, it’s time to run like the wind. We strongly believe that Dreamcash can service millions of retail traders across the globe, it’s just a matter of time.

We are extremely excited to be a part of this vision and help Dreamcash succeed through the network, skills and experience we’ve built along the way.

Beam Ventures

When we say we’ve matured over the years, we mean it. We started as an online organization and now grew to an ecosystem that includes an official license from the financial regulator in Abu Dhabi. With Beam Ventures, we’ve become the first fully licensed fund of its sort in a country that has shown unprecedented growth throughout the past years.

Where we’re currently very occupied with everything that’s involved with raising an ambitious sum of capital, we truly feel like Beam Ventures marks the beginning of a new chapter in our existence. Instead of chasing narratives like other projects and struggling to keep our heads above water, we’re now in business with country officials, globally known institutions and the world’s finest advisors and mentors.

Beam Ventures will be responsible for the birth and development of the next generation of frontier technology. Not only through its venture arm, but more importantly so through its accelerator arm.

The accelerator

A common misconception in the world of venture capital is that merely writing a check does the trick. Raising a bag of money and simply trusting these, often novel, entrepreneurs to return on that investment is a risky practice. Instead, having hands-on involvement from the very first phases of our investments have shown tremendous results over the years. With that in mind, the Beam Ventures accelerator arm is taking shape.

In a hybrid format where participants will both work remotely and on the ground in Abu Dhabi, the accelerator program will become the breeding ground for start-ups in the world of compute, AI, DePIN, web3 infrastructure and anything in between. With an evergrowing market and demand in these regions, the need for constructive companies that are smart and edgy will always be there.

The next decade

After four years together we feel privileged to still have such a strong community to this date. Tons of events across the world where we’ve met one another, online sessions and countless messages, all around one thing that binds us together, BEAM. It has been a memorable ride so far, but we are far from finished. With a next batch of catalysts lined up, we’re ready to keep running for the next years to come.

Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

Want to learn more about Beam?

Beam Gaming: Fueling millions of gamers behind the scenes

Beam — Wed, 27 Aug 2025 10:25:21 GMT

It’s no secret that the name Beam has a strong affiliation with gaming in the world of web3. We’ve grown over the years, especially in the past year. We’ve seen investments in other areas flourish and new opportunities rise. That opens new doors and brings a lot of excitement to the table. However, there’s one thing that started this whole journey.

Once a gamer, always a gamer

Do you remember the days sitting in your living room as a little kid playing your very first games? Whether you were there for the SEGA days, DOOM, Pokemon, World of Warcraft or started playing Minecraft as your first game, a true gamer will never forget his childhood games. The memories crafted there will last a lifetime, and will crown you a gamer forever. In some way, we feel the same with Beam.

We’ve grown up as a gaming centered organization. Anything we did related to gaming in the early days. We’ve built a thriving community, invested in dozens of games, created software and hosted events, that all had one thing in common, and that’s gaming. In the meantime however, the years have matured us as an organization, and similar to a teenager growing up, our interests have widened.

Left and right new opportunities presented themselves in the shape of investments in AI, RWA, DeFi and various infrastructure plays. We’ve helped launch various projects, eventually launched our own blockchain with the help of Avalanche, and presented an entire new brand that represents this growth earlier this year. There’s always that itch though, that gaming sentiment in the background simmering.

Picking your winners deliberately

It’s been rough in the world of web3 gaming lately. Gaming studios seem to shut down by the bushes and overall interest has been decreasing slowly. Although it’s sad to see, it’s perfectly in line with our thesis of moving away from an approach of having hundreds of games on board, to focusing on a select few games that we truly believe in.

That means games like TrialXtreme, Forgotten Playland and a select few others that are currently building on the Beam Network. TrialXtreme is the perfect example of a project that’s been through it all, and has really taken the time to think through their approach in the world of blockchain. Whereas others rush their token launches to survive, TrialXtreme is deliberately waiting for the right moment, to first truly focus on their game. It’s refreshing to see this way of looking at things, instead of the blindsided greed that’s often present in this space.

Already well over a million gamers in, TrialXtreme holds the power to single-handedly bring millions of transactions onto the Beam Network. As we empower their gamers through on-chain transactions, in-game assets that are eternalized through blockchain technology, a large quantity of BEAM tokens are expected to be required.

Less visibility, more responsibility

As we presented by the end of May, Beam has been evolving. As part of this transformation, we’ve decided to align our efforts on all levels. In practical terms, this means that the Beam Hub is no longer a part of our product suite. This gaming platform never reached the KPIs we’ve determined, and therefore we are now looking at different avenues. Similarly, our YouTube, Instagram and X channels that were merely focused on gaming, will find a new home shortly.

The future of the gaming division will be less visible for the public eye, but we’re taking on more responsibility than ever before. Through the BeamSDK, we have supported the games that are currently building on the Beam Network, and empower their collective millions of gamers with robust infrastructure that unlocks features they’d otherwise not have access to.

We’re very excited and curious how the gaming industry will evolve over the next decade. With GTA VI finally coming out, Esports growing like cabbage, AI being more present than ever before, and gamers having extremely high expectations, it certainly won’t be boring.

Want to learn more about Beam?

How Dreamcash kickstarts the trading division for Beam

Beam — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 11:15:21 GMT

Earlier this year, we introduced six new divisions that collectively make up Beam. Ranging from AI, Ventures, Finance to RWA all the way to gaming, there’s a lot of ground we cover. While the interpretation of others may be evident, the trading division for Beam missed its flagship product.

That’s until we came in touch with Dreamcash, a seamless, highly-polished user experience layer built directly on top of Hyperliquid.

Spotting an opportunity

Hyperliquid has been an undeniable force in the past year within the industry. The day the native token got introduced, every single person that ever touched the product, and far beyond that, got taken by storm. What seemed like another project that was able to quickly grab the attention to then slowly fade away, turned out to have a lasting impact on the industry, and set new standards.

Today, Hyperliquid is the dominant player in the fields of decentralized trading, especially in the field of perpetual orders, handling over $19B in volume every single day. It all started with just their application, a decentralized exchange. As the application and its demand grew however, a whole new world opened where founders wanted to start building on top of the product, on top of its HyperEVM, using the Hyperliquid stack.

And it just so happened that we spotted an unmatched team among the hungry founders that wanted to jump on top of this train moving at full speed.

From millions to billions of users

Across the world there are millions, if not billions, of people interested in cryptocurrency. Hyperliquid today is used by less than a million people. Although the experience is smooth and arguably user friendly, it can still be quite daunting for someone who’s never seen an exchange before. Charts in your face and dozens of order types to choose from, that must be possible in an easier way, right?

“Designed to feel like the best exchanges in the world, with instant onboarding, Apple Pay, off-ramps, and an intuitive UI, Dreamcash brings together the ease of Web2 with the power of DeFi.

From casual retail users to power traders, Dreamcash bridges the gap: mobile-first UX for speed and accessibility, and a powerful desktop/web version that elevates pro-level trading to a new standard.” — Dreamcash team

Currently live merely with a waitlist application, it’s a matter of time before the whole product finds its way into the hands of the masses. Having deliberately waited until Hyperliquid could stand the test of time, the full application is scheduled to launch later this year. Now, you may wonder how this all involves Beam?

Opening up the Beam Trading division

Having an open outlook on the markets and constantly speaking to passionate founders often presents you with opportunities. In some cases, that’s just an investment into a seed round, an integration into one of our products, or a marketing opportunity. Very rarely do we stumble upon a concept that has so much potential, that makes us want to embrace it with both arms. This happened before with Sophon, and now it’s happening again with Dreamcash.

Since the early days of Dreamcash, we’ve been as involved as possible to see this idea succeed. Whether that’s marketing, development, design, strategy or anything in between, we’re here to help. You can only make a first impression once, and we know how important it is to hit those initial chords the right way.

What comes next, and in what ways Beam and Dreamcash will collaborate further, will be announced in due course.