Sentient, a blockchain-based AI startup, has successfully raised $85 million in a seed funding round. The investment was co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with additional backing from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Republic, and Arrington Capital, among others.
In a statement on X (formerly Twitter), Sentient announced, “We are thrilled to announce Sentient’s $85M seed round, co-led by Founders Fund with Peter Thiel, alongside Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures. This marks a pivotal step in aligning AI development toward a community-built open AGI platform.”
Co-founded by Sandeep Nailwal, also the founder of Polygon, Sentient focuses on integrating blockchain technology with artificial intelligence to create decentralized AI solutions. The startup’s open-source platform aims to enable developers, researchers, and businesses to be compensated for their contributions to AI tools.
The core contributors to Sentient include Nailwal; Pramod Viswanath; Forrest G. Hamrick, Professor of Engineering at Princeton University; Himanshu Tyagi, Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc); and the AI venture studio Sensys, bringing extensive expertise in blockchain technology, AI research, and ecosystem building.
“Sentient will be built on Polygon Agglayer, and I will be helping them as a core contributor. This project is extremely ambitious and with model loyalty, it is trying to solve a problem that has never been approached from this direction. With this fundraise, Sentient already has some of the world’s best AI minds joining it, and the AI team is getting pretty stacked with senior people from Google, DeepMind, and other top AI companies in the world engaged,” Nailwal stated in a post on X.
Sentient is dedicated to ensuring ownership rights in AI development and initiating an ‘era of fair AI entrepreneurship.’ The company’s vision is to create an open platform for AGI development, distributing AI’s benefits equitably and aligning its growth with global interests.
“Our vision at Sentient is to ensure AI benefits humanity as a whole. By creating an open platform for AGI development, we aim to distribute AI’s benefits equitably and align its growth with global interests,” the company said.
With this significant funding, Sentient is poised to revolutionize the integration of AI and blockchain technology, making strides toward a more decentralized and fair AI ecosystem.
