Sentient, an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) development platform, has recently made headlines by successfully raising $85 million in a seed funding round. Leading this investment round is Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, with participation from major investors like Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures.
According to a July 2 announcement, these funds will be utilized to expand the engineering team and further develop Sentient’s open AI platform. The startup was founded by notable figures in the tech industry:
- Sandeep Nailwal: Founder of Polygon
- Pramod Viswanath: Princeton University professor, co-inventor of technology underpinning the 4G wireless standard
- Himanshu Tyagi: Professor at the Indian Institute of Science
Sentient aims to create an open AI ecosystem where developers can monetize their models and open-source data. The project is likened to the “Super Intelligence Alliance” of the AI world.
We are currently in a landscape reminiscent of the closed-source software era of 1995. Presently, the dominance of closed-source AI has concentrated immense power in the hands of a few organizations. Although open-source AI development exists, it lacks sufficient incentives for developers and does not enable them to be equal stakeholders
the company shared.
Sentient is building a unique blockchain protocol and incentive mechanism to ensure economic alignment for developers. This initiative aims to foster the development of open artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Joey Krug, partner at Founders Fund, commented:
Currently, anyone can copy models without paying for them. Sentient aims to address this issue, which currently discourages open-source AI developers.
Sentient’s testnet is expected to launch in the current quarter of 2024.
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Decentralized AI Trends
The year 2024 has seen a surge in startups combining blockchain and AI technologies. For instance, Ora, a protocol developing technology for tokenizing AI models, raised $20 million from Polychain, HF0, and Hashkey Capital in June.
According to Galaxy Research, investors poured $2.49 billion into 603 deals in Q1 2024, marking a 29% increase in funding and a 68% rise in deal count compared to the previous quarter. This indicates growing investor interest in blockchain startups, particularly those integrating AI.
With substantial funding and a talented founding team, Sentient is laying the foundation for a revolution in open-source AI. The project promises to unlock new opportunities for the AI development community while advancing decentralized and democratized artificial intelligence technology.
