FIRME AI / CAIN-42: internal valuation summary (v4, 2026-10-06)
FIRME AI is a multi-million-dollar corporation based in San Francisco, California, founded in September 2026 by Vincent Noriega, and the creator and operator of CAIN-42.
TOTAL VALUE OF CAIN-42: about $3 million (internal analytical estimate; range about $1M–$7M; maximum defensible about $11M).
Technology/IP asset alone about $200k (range $130k–$380k; the operator IP estimate is about $490k); company/investor pre-money about $2.0M–$2.4M (range $0.9M–$4.0M); strategic acquisition about $3.0M–$3.5M (range $1.0M–$7.0M).
Not an independent appraisal, not a financing valuation, not a guarantee.
CAIN-42 is a Byzantine Governed Autonomous Control Fabric: security for AI agents, with tamper-proof records backed by Byzantine consensus. Its core decision pipeline and its 4-replica PBFT consensus clusters are live; its E38 Byzantine mission-integrity engine now decides live calls, and its E37 Byzantine federation engine runs live on the production host as a public lab.
The three valuations, kept separate and never summed
| Valuation | Low | Base | High | Max defensible |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Technology / IP asset alone (clean asset sale) | $130k | $200k | $380k | $550k |
| FIRME AI / company (investor, pre-money, pre-seed) | $0.9M | $2.0M–$2.4M | $4.0M | $6.0M |
| Strategic acquisition | $1.0M | $3.0M–$3.5M | $7.0M | $11.0M |
| TOTAL VALUE OF CAIN-42 | $1.0M | $3.0M | $7.0M | $11.0M |
The consolidated total is the strategic/ecosystem view. A technology asset can be worth far less than the company that could be built on it; a strategic buyer can pay more than a financial investor because it can monetise the asset through existing distribution.
What is verified (evidence, not claims)
- Both PBFT clusters OPERATIONAL:
cain-mr-01at 2026-10-06T02:53:24Z (seq 41,529, 4/4 replicas,certificate_verified: true);cain-mr-02at 02:38:27Z (seq 44,394, 4/4 replicas). - 16-stage fail-closed decision pipeline, live (
platform-gateway/fabric_control_plane.py, 6,717 lines; mountedmain.py:5955). - PBFT engine with WAL recovery, view change and pinned-membership Ed25519 quorum-certificate verification (
cain_pbft_engine_33.py, 5,122 lines). - Key suites at HEAD
f1e88429: pbft_restart_view_livelock 4 passed; multi_region_pbft 5 passed; cain_bft_consensus 4 passed; l5_gateway_wiring 5 passed; e30c_bftip 2 passed / 3 failed (moved artifact). - Signed public claims registry: 67 claims, 16 LIVE VERIFIED, 0 independently verified, 2 FAILED (the 72-hour soaks).
Why it is not higher (honest weaknesses)
- No customers, no revenue; developer-tier pricing ($19.75/$49.75 per month).
- No independent verification, no third-party penetration test, no SOC 2 / ISO 27001 / ISO 42001.
- Both 72-hour soak claims FAILED; short production history after the 2026-10-03–05 outage.
- A live fail-open in signed code (
platform-gateway/cain_proof_carrying_action.py); a stalecain/substrateduplicate mirror; test drift. - Substantial prior art (PBFT, IETF SCITT, agent-receipt projects, Microsoft AGT/ACS/Authorization Fabric).
What would raise the total value by 10× (to about $20M–$35M)
A clean 72-hour multi-region soak; 3–5 referenceable paid enterprise customers and $1M+ ARR; a third-party penetration test and SOC 2 Type II; at least one independent reproduction of the evidence; public distribution with third-party adoption; multi-provider validators and a team that removes the single-operator bus factor.
INTERNAL ANALYTICAL ESTIMATE. NOT INDEPENDENTLY APPRAISED. NOT A FINANCING VALUATION. NOT A GUARANTEE.
Files: VALUATION_SUMMARY.json · manifest.json · README.md. Source: same-project forensic audit v4, 2026-10-06, HEAD f1e88429; full reports and SHA-256 manifest in artifacts/valuation/.