Sentient, an open-source AI collaboration platform, announced a significant funding round of $85 million on July 2, led by top venture capital firms including Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures. The platform, which is still in its early stages and yet to launch a product, aims to foster AI innovation through a community-driven approach. It plans to build an AI platform on Polygon Agglayer to enable developer collaboration and monetization. Sentient's approach includes a unique AI model framework named 'OML' which stands for Open, Monetizable, and Loyal, designed to maintain openness, monetization capability, and loyalty to the community.

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On July 2nd, the open-source AI collaboration platform Sentient announced a financing of 85 million US dollars, with leading VCs such as Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures participating. Written by: Deep Tide TechFlow. The demand for AI in encryption is still under discussion, but it seems that the narrative of the encryption world cannot be separated from AI. "No AI, No Encryption" has become a representative phenomenon of this cycle. Moreover, it seems that the story of AI is becoming more convincing. On July 2nd, the open-source AI collaboration platform Sentient announced a financing of 85 million US dollars, with leading VCs such as Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures leading the investment, and Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, and others following suit, creating another wave of massive financing. In this "atypical bull market," this substantial seed round financing appears exceptionally dazzling. The last phenomenon-level AI fundraising king, do we need to go back to Bittensor? Is this Sentient something substantial or another wave of fundraising hype? Let's interpret it. The AI "trailer" jointly produced by China and India? According to a tweet by Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, Sentient's origin can be traced back to a conversation he had with EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan about the future development of encryption and AI. Subsequently, Sreeram Kannan shared this conversation with Princeton University professor Pramod Viswanath (co-inventor of the 4G wireless standard support technology Flash OFDM) and Indian Institute of Science professor Himanshu Tyagi, and their research coincidentally aligned, leading to the formal introduction of Sentient after sparking ideas. Interestingly, three of the four core contributors to the project are Indian, and there are also several Chinese-founded institutions among the investors. With both Chinese and Indian sides pooling resources, are they planning something big? With money and people, what does this Chinese-Indian joint "AI blockbuster" intend to achieve in this cycle of encryption AI? After reviewing the project materials, we can only say that this Chinese-Indian collaboration is still in the teaser phase, and the full movie is yet to come. Making open source more sustainable. The current AI technology is monopolized by a few corporate organizations, and developing open-source AI lacks sufficient incentives for developers. As AI advances, open-source developers lack long-term support for benefits, and to achieve better development results, collaboration and contributions among developers are necessary.The development status of open-source AI is more challenging than imagined, let alone competing with the powerful AI in the hands of monopolistic organizations. Yes, AI should be open and free, but if insisting on open-source results in not having enough to eat, then the matter of 'anti-monopoly' will have to be put on hold. Sentient officially claims to be the 'Open AGI Foundation,' aiming to drive AI innovation through community-driven methods. To achieve this, Sentient plans to build an AI platform based on Polygon Agglayer for developers to collaborate and monetize their contributions. Developers can quickly collaborate on the platform and monetize their contributions. By incentivizing developers, Open AGI can develop better and further. OML Model: In order to realize the platform concept of 'sheltering all the cold-hearted people with joy,' Sentient has introduced a special hosted AI model 'OML,' which stands for Open, Monetizable, and Loyal. This framework aims to ensure that the platform can maintain openness, monetization capabilities, and loyalty to the community while supporting developers. Roadmap: The Sentient testnet will be launched this quarter, outlining Sentient's short, medium, and long-term development paths in the official introduction document. Short to medium-term goals focus on Sentient AI platform collaboration with the community (launching community activities), developing on-chain protocols, ecosystem construction, and OML model standardization. Long-term goals focus on AI models built through community collaboration, the future of open AGI supported by OML, and innovative incentives for AI developers. Conclusion: Sentient has a significant background and good ideas, but many Web3 AI projects are working on incentive attribution and other aspects that Sentient is not the first to propose. Moreover, with such a large amount of funding, few people were paying attention to this project before, and Sentient is still in a stage where no products have been launched. As for why many institutions are willing to invest so much money in Sentient, which is still in the whiteboard stage, it may be due to trust in 'Sandeep leading the way.' After all, in such a non-typical bull market, it is better for investors to put their money into places with stories, people, and backgrounds. The combination of AI + Polygon also provides investors with an explanation, right? After experiencing several rounds of so-called 'king-level projects,' investing in crypto projects seems to be more about investing in people and creating a game. Whether this is a way to make money in the industry upstream 'as simple as breathing' or a truly courageous and strategic move based on seeing technological trends remains to be evaluated. However, as long as the market is rising, it is considered just and future-oriented; as long as it is falling, it is considered a scam and empty. The future of Sentient's efforts to 'continuously develop AI and improve the construction of personnel security' to what extent, whether it can truly differentiate itself from other 'peers,' and whether it can capture the attention of limited users, let us continue to pay attention.</span></span></p>