Sentient closes $85M seed round for open source AI
Sentient, an open source developer for artificial intelligence (AI), has raised $85 million in a seed funding round led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund alongside Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures.
The funds will support the hiring of engineers and development of Sentient's open AI platform, according to a July 2 announcement. The startup is an AI research organization that wants to enable AI developers to monetize their open source models and data, along with other ecosystems like the Super Intelligence Alliance.
“In the year We live in an era reminiscent of the closed-source software landscape of 1995. Currently, closed source AI is dominated by a huge power center with a few organizations. Despite open-source AI development, there is insufficient incentive for developers to become equal stakeholders, the company said.
Behind the startup are Sandeep Nilwal, founder of Polygon; Pramod Viswanath, Princeton professor and technology innovator developing the 4G wireless standard; and Himanshu Tyagi, professor at the Indian Institute of Science.
According to Sentient, its underlying blockchain protocol and incentive mechanism will ensure an economic bond for developers, enabling the development of open artificial general intelligence.
“Nowadays, anyone can copy models without paying for them, and Sentient aims to solve the incentive problem that hinders open source AI,” said Joy Krug, a partner at Founders Fund. Sentient Testnet will be available in Q4 2024.
The seed round by 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.
Decentralized AI is gaining traction
The tech industry has seen startups combining blockchain and AI technologies in 2024.
Among the protocols looking to bring AI onchain, Ora raised $20 million in June from Polychain, HF0 and Hashkey Capital. The protocol is building simulation technology for AI models through its initial model offering. Based on an ERC-20 token, the mechanism entitles anyone who buys a token to own and share in the revenue generated by the AI model.
Venture capital investments in blockchain startups have increased significantly in recent months. According to data compiled by Galaxy Research, investors invested $2.49 billion in 603 deals in the first quarter of 2024, a 29 percent increase in funding and a 68 percent increase over the previous quarter.
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