Sentient receives $85 million in seed round funding, aims to revolutionize open AI, and claims to defeat OpenAI?

Sentient Raises $85M Seed Funding to Revolutionize Open AI

Sentient, an AI research organization dedicated to building an open, artificial general intelligence (AGI) economy, has raised $85 million in seed funding. The round was led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Foresight Ventures, and others.

What is Sentient?

Sentient aims to empower developers in the open source AI community by enabling them to monetize their models, data, and innovations. It seeks to create a platform and protocol where developers can collaborate to build powerful AI solutions that drive innovation in the open AGI economy.

Sentient Strategic Director Sandeep Nailwal (Co-Founder of Polygon) said,

"Sentient will be built on the Polygon AggLayer and will reward engineers for tasks such as labeling and refining data, as well as other activities to train AI models. If successful, Sentient could change the course of humanity's relationship with AI." Sandeep Nailwal said he is also a core contributor to Sentient.

Notably, Sentient's team includes Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal and EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan. Sandeep Nailwal emphasized Sentient's potential impact on the decentralization and enhanced security of AI through its integration with Polygon's AggLayer.

Sentient's Strategic Goals and Roadmap

Sentient plans to build an incentive-driven collaborative platform that ensures fair recognition and fosters innovative ideas. It aims to build an infrastructure that supports open AGI, with contributions from millions of AI agents and billions of users, which has the potential to change the relationship between humans and AI.

According to Sandeep Nailwal, the concept of Sentient stems from discussions within the crypto community about the decentralization and security of artificial intelligence, which is consistent with the structural transformation promoted by Polygon.

When Dovey Wan, founder of Primitive Ventures, pointed out that we are witnessing the convergence of several trends: binary code becomes currency code, machine program becomes social contract program, and human language becomes programming language. This convergence heralds the advent of a new era that embraces the principles of decentralization, transparency, and collective ownership.

Franklin Bi, partner of Pantera Capital, further stated that open systems will surpass closed systems and let Open AI beat OpenAI.

Sentient's grand vision of ensuring that AI benefits all mankind is not only a competition with existing AI solutions, but also a track for the next generation of AI's intelligent leap. Of course, the path and execution of its realization are still to be perfected in details, but every attempt is an exploration and practice of future possibilities.