Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund Co-Leads $85M Investment in Sentient
Sentient, an open-source AI development firm, announced the completion of an $85 million seed funding round. Key participants included Ethereal, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi, Dao5, Nomad, and Primitive Ventures, with Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund leading the round. Sandeep Nailwal, founder of Polygon and a major contributor to Sentient, emphasized the transformative potential of AI and the importance of equitable distribution of AI benefits. Sentient aims to compete directly with OpenAI, as stated by core contributors Pramod Viswanath and Himanshu Tyagi. The funds will be used to accelerate the development of Sentient’s AI platform, with a testnet launch planned for Q3 this year.

Notable participants include Ethereal, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi, Dao5, Nomad, and Primitive Ventures. Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund co-led the round.One of the main contributors to Sentient is Sandeep Nailwal – the founder of Polygon, who said:“The rapid advancement of AI has the potential to transform every aspect of our lives, but the concentration of power in the hands of a few centralized entities poses significant risks. […] By building an open platform for AGI development, we aim to ensure that the benefits of AI are distributed equitably and that its development aligns with the interests of humanity as a whole.”Sandeep Nailwal is just one of the four core contributors to Sentient.Sentient itself is a platform that’s building open-source AI models. The professors mentioned above are Pramod Viswanath – a professor of engineering at the university of Princeton, who also co-invented the technology used in the 4G wireless standard, as well as Himanshu Tyagi – an engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Science. Both of them have said that they want to compete directly with OpenAI – the firm led by Sam Altman, which is behind ChatGPT and Sora, among other AI models.According to a press release shared with CryptoPotato, the testnet of Sentient is slated for Q3 this year. The funds from this round will be used to accelerate the development of its AI platform.