Sentient, an open-source artificial intelligence (AI) development platform, has acquired $85 million in a seed fundraising round. Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures led the round.
A recent release states that the money will help Sentient develop its open AI platform and hire engineers. Like other ecosystems like the Super Intelligence Alliance, the startup is an AI research company trying to let AI creators profit from their open-source models and data.
“We are in an era reminiscent of the 1995 closed-source software landscape. At present, the dominance of closed-source AI has centralized immense power with 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 stated
Behind the startup are Himanshu Tyagi, an Indian Institute of Science professor; Pramod Viswanath, a Princeton professor and co-inventor of the technology behind the 4G wireless standard; and Sandeep Nailwal, the creator of Polygon.
“It [Sentient] will be built on Polygon Agglayer, and I will be helping them as a core contributor. This project is extremely ambitious, and with model loyalty, it is trying to solve a problem that has never been approached in this direction. With this fundraise, Sentient already has some of the world’s best AI minds joining it, and the AI team is getting pretty stacked with senior people from Google, Deepmind, and other top AI companies in the world engaged,” said Nailwal in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Sentient claims that its incentive system and underlying blockchain design will guarantee developers’ economic alignment, allowing open artificial general intelligence to grow.
“Currently, anyone is able to just copy models without paying for them and Sentient aims to solve this incentive problem which disincentivizes open source AI,” said Joey Krug, partner at Founders Fund. Sentient’s testnet will be available in this quarter of 2024
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Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Dao5, Delphi, Primitive Ventures, Nomad, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, Hypersphere, IDG, Topology, Protagonist, Folius, Sky9, Canonical Crypto, Dispersion Capital, Mirana, Foresight, HashKey, Spartan and others” backed the seed round as well.
Decentralised Artificial Intelligence Finds popularity.
Startups using blockchain and artificial intelligence technology will abound in the IT sector by 2024.
Among the systems aiming to bring artificial intelligence onchain is Ora, which in June raised $20 million from Polychain, HF0, and Hashkey Capital. Through its first model offering, the protocol is developing a system to tokenize artificial intelligence models. The system will entitize everyone who purchases an ERC-20 token to own and share income created by an AI model.
In recent months, venture capital investments in blockchain companies have risen significantly. Data gathered by Galaxy Research shows that in the first quarter of 2024, investors pumped $2.49 billion into 653 agreements, a 29% increase in investment and a 68% boost in deal count from the previous quarter.
Conclusion: Path Forward In Sentient Open-Source AI Development
According to officials, Sentient plans to allocate the newly raised capital to enhance its platform’s capabilities, scale operations, and expand its developer community. This strategic expansion aims to strengthen Sentient’s position in the open-source AI sector and foster innovation across various industries. Sentient seeks to empower developers and facilitate broader access to AI technologies by investing in advanced features and scalability improvements.
Sentient reportedly distinguishes itself through its commitment to openness and community-driven development in a competitive AI market where proprietary solutions dominate. Emphasizing transparent practices, Sentient aims to democratize AI tools and stimulate collaboration among researchers and developers. This inclusive approach not only enhances accessibility but also promotes a culture of innovation and shared knowledge within the AI community.
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