Blockchain-based AI startup Sentient Labs, which is headquartered in the UAE, has raised $85 million in seed funding. The round was co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital (which backed Few and Far and Brine Fi), and Framework Ventures.
Additional strategic investors include Arrington Capital, Canonical, Dao5, Delphi, Dispersion, Ethereal, Folius, Foresight, Hack VC, Hashkey, Hypersphere, IDG, Mirana, Nomad, Primitive Ventures, Protagonist, Republic, Robot Ventures, Sky9, Spartan, Symbolic Capital, Topology, and several more.
Funds utilisation
Sentient Labs will use the capital to accelerate the development of open source AI platform. It will also expand its team by hiring experts in AI research and blockchain engineering. It also intends to establish partnerships with leading academic institutions and industry players.
Team behind Sentient Labs
The company was founded in 2024 by a team, including Polygon Labs co-founder and executive chairman Sandeep Nailwal along with academics Pramod Viswanath and Himanshu Tyagi. Its mission is to democratise AI development, ensuring that AI benefits humanity as a whole.
The system rewards engineers for tasks such as data labelling and refining, which are essential for training AI models. This platform utilises software from Polygon, which is also venturing into the AI space. It aims to build a community-driven open AGI platform, leveraging blockchain technology via Polygon.
How it differs from OpenAI, Google Gemini
There are numerous AI projects on platforms such as GitHub, GitLab, and OneDev. Most projects are redundant or replicas of existing ones. This is where lies the need for an AI project like Sentient.
The company aims to build an open world through blockchain to achieve transparency and fairness in a world dominated by tech giants. This approach makes Sentient Labs different from other AI giants such as OpenAI, Google, or Meta. While most of these AI projects are closed-source or semi-closed, this company offers an open-source approach.
“We’re not just another AI project,” stated co-founder Himanshu Tyagi. “We’re building an open world through blockchain to achieve transparency and fairness. When our AI is used, everyone who contributed will be rewarded through the blockchain protocol.”
Our thoughts on Sentient Labs
The US startup aims high but faces challenges. It plans to launch the testnet in two months to prove its concept, which combines AI and crypto. If successful, Sentient Labs could change the AI industry, offering a fairer alternative to current models offered by AI giants.
