Open-source AI development platform Sentient has completed an $85 million seed round of financing, led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures. Sentient aims to challenge the industry's dominance of centralized AI models by establishing a decentralized Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) platform. The platform is backed by Ethereum and built on Polygon, utilizing blockchain technology to incentivize collaboration, construction, and expansion of AI models. Sentient's core team includes Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon, with the goal of democratizing AI and directly competing with tech giants like OpenAI by building open-source AI models through community contributions.

MATIC

Original author: Biteye core contributor Viee
Original translation: Biteye core contributor Crush
In recent days, the open-source artificial intelligence development platform Sentient announced the completion of a $85 million seed funding round, aimed at breaking the dominance of centralized AI model development in the industry. This substantial funding has attracted much market attention. According to disclosures, the round was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with other investors including Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, and more.

1. Why is Sentient given $85 million in seed funding?
   1. Top team support: One of Sentient's core contributors is Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. Sentient's advisor is EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan.
   2. Backed by Ethereum: The Sentient platform will be built on Polygon, which means Ethereum is expanding into the AI sector.
   3. Disruptive technology concept: Competing directly with OpenAI, creating a decentralized general artificial intelligence (AGI) platform. Through blockchain technology, it incentivizes contributors to collaborate, build, replicate, and scale AI models, and rewards contributors.
These three irresistible advantages are gradually revealing Sentient's value.

Highlight 1: Created by tech giant Sandeep Nailwal
One of Sentient's core contributors is Polygon co-founder, Sandeep Nailwal. Those who have experienced the last bull market will certainly recognize this "millionaire from the slums" of the Web3 world. He left the slums of Madrid to lead the multi-billion dollar Web3 company Polygon, upgrading it to an Ethereum Layer 2 aggregator, becoming the biggest dark horse in the crypto asset market at the time, creating a market value of tens of billions of dollars. This is a very passionate story, and Polygon's current position among the top public chains is largely due to Sandeep Nailwal's values. Born in the slums of India, dropping out was quite common among his peers, some of whom also indulged in alcohol and gambling. Throughout his upbringing, he was often motivated to escape this life. He wanted to be a big shot, not play small games, and hated failure. These values have accompanied Sandeep until he created MATIC Network. At that time, in 2017, people were very enthusiastic about Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). With just a white paper, even without a product, it was possible to raise funds, and many projects failed after fundraising. In India, along with JD Kanani and Anurag Arjun, they launched MATIC Network, and the team could easily have raised $20 million, but they did not do so because taking shortcuts and making quick money contradicted Sandeep's big shot philosophy. Sandeep responded, "Matic is solving a long-term problem, so we had to choose a slower growth path. If we had obtained large funds early, it might have limited our development and vision." Eventually, they chose to raise limited funds—$5 million from Binance, spending more time to refine the product. In summary, besides the team's keen entrepreneurial sense and strong technical capabilities, Sandeep's spiritual fortitude is definitely an indispensable stabilizer in the success of Polygon, and it will certainly bring more than just technical core to Sentient.

Highlight 2: Leading Ethereum towards the hottest AI narrative
Polygon is open and powerful, its mission is to expand Ethereum, allowing more users to access Crypto. Functionally, Polygon aims to create an Ethereum-compatible multi-chain ecosystem, using a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism to handle on-chain transactions, deriving security from Ethereum. This allows the blockchain network to connect and scale, hence it is called "the internet of blockchains." Simply put, Polygon makes Ethereum faster, more convenient, and cheaper. Polygon was originally Matic Network, initially a PoS chain which later evolved into a complete set of expansion solutions and was renamed Polygon. Later, Polygon acquired a bunch of zk technology, now focusing on achieving Ethereum's unified liquidity and unlimited scalability through AggLayer and CDK. As this bull market arrives, AI has become one of the most watched topics, also becoming a new narrative entry point for established public chains. Sentient announced it will be built on Polygon, which also means Ethereum will shine anew in the AI sector. In fact, Polygon has shown significant sensitivity in the AI field early on, launching Polygon Copilot in June 2023, and later another AI tool, Brain. Compared to Brain, which has more comprehensive functions and can deploy contracts through AI. On April 19, 2024, the highly watched AI project Ora Protocol announced that its on-chain AI oracle is integrating with Polygon PoS, allowing developers to build AI-driven dApps using the Ora Protocol oracle, leveraging AI and richer data sources to break the limitations of smart contracts. Can Polygon carry the massive AI narrative?The answer is definitive. Based on the Polygon aggregation architecture, it is possible to have tens of thousands of chains, all connected to a single layer, with the security of Ethereum, aiming to achieve an infinitely scalable blockchain network. These chains will focus on different sectors such as DeFi, gaming NFTs, and AI projects. For instance, Sentient is a project built on the Polygon CDK chain. Specific chains and ecosystems focus on developing applications for specific industries, which is Polygon's blueprint in the decentralized world. If we want to democratize AI, a major limitation is cost, including training and data collection costs. Sandeep has publicly expressed his view that these cost issues can be addressed through cryptographic incentives, such as tokenized models, and Polygon will attempt various approaches. Moreover, decentralized computing, like AI computing's DePIN infrastructure, has seen multiple experiments. While AI demand is high but supply is limited, decentralized solutions may address the supply issue but may not necessarily replace centralized providers, as the latter might have better coordination and performance. Highlight three: Open-source AI, to disruptively compete with tech giants like Google, is a current need for entities like OpenAI that provide AI services to find long-term decentralized alternatives. Firstly, why does AI need to be open-sourced? We all know that AI is developing rapidly and has the potential to change many aspects of human life, but if these technologies are controlled by a few companies, there are significant risks. Secondly, why are decentralized alternatives needed? Currently, the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is mainly conducted secretly by large companies because they have substantial resources. This closed approach results in all model parameters and variables being inaccessible for external inspection, verification, or distribution, completely controlled by these companies. This is Sandeep's concern, hence the idea to establish a decentralized open platform to develop AGI, ensuring the benefits of AI are fairly distributed and the development process aligns with everyone's interests. To address these issues, Sentient was created. Imagine an AI platform that is open and open-sourced, allowing everyone to collaborate and incentivize people through blockchain technology to build and scale AI models, with participants receiving rewards. This is what Sentient aims to do, committed to building open-source AI models through community contributions to address the centralization and security ethical issues in the current AI field. Moreover, its goal is to compete directly with OpenAI and differentiate through its community-building approach. Unlike OpenAI, which restricts users from directly accessing its models, Sentient will allow users to access and contribute to the models, rewarding contributors. Sentient's reward mechanism is implemented through initiating 'events', each with specific metrics to assess contributions and provide rewards. If achievable, Sentient will address the core issue hindering the development of open-source AI: the incentive mechanism. Currently, on open-source AI platforms, anyone can replicate models without paying fees. Sentient plans to enter the testnet phase this quarter and aims to use this funding round to expand the team, hire experts, etc. Risk Warning: Sentient's token incentive model is not yet established, which is one of the core structures of the project. If the incentive mechanism is not good enough, the core issue hindering the development of open-source AI remains unresolved. The project is in its early stages, currently without a finished product, the testnet has not been launched, and the community size is small, creating significant uncertainty. Users are advised to wait for further information disclosure or project progress before interacting. With limited information and no project progress, be cautious about clicking on website and Discord links under tweets, and protect your financial safety. Conclusion: The rapid development of AI has brought humanity to a crossroads of two future worlds. One path leads to a closed world dominated by a few large companies with proprietary models. The other path leads to an open world where models are open-sourced by default, and reasoning is transparent and verifiable. This open world is our ideal future, only achievable through blockchain technology, making artificial intelligence more fair and transparent. Each bull market sees a batch of public chains in the limelight, and when the bull market ends, another batch quietly exits the stage. Looking forward to Sentient leading Polygon and Ethereum towards a deeper future. Original article link