Sentient Labs gets $85M boost led by Peter Thiel's fund
Dubai-based Sentient Labs, co-founded by Polygon's Sandeep Nailwal, has successfully raised $85 million in a seed funding round. The round was co-led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures. Other contributors included Robot Ventures, Delphi, Republic, Arrington Capital and several other venture capital firms. Founded in January 2024 on the Polygon CDK chain, Sentient Labs aims to develop an open-source decentralized AI and eventually AGI (Artificial General Intelligence).
Sentient Labs to scale engineering team with raised funds
The funds raised by Sentient Labs will be utilized to expand the engineering team and scale the platform. Co-founder Himanshu Tyagi stated that the funding will be used to scale their engineering team and the platform. He further added that building a supportive ecosystem for developers is a priority, as they are committed to delivering results. The company plans to enter the testnet phase within two months and aims to increase its current team size of 20 members.
Sentient Labs's open-source approach to AI development
Sentient Labs is taking a different approach from AI giants like OpenAI, Google, or Meta by developing an open-source architecture. Tyagi pointed out that this approach allows for better monitoring of issues such as plagiarism and backdoor attacks. He also highlighted the company's 'Open, Monetizable, and Loyal' (OML) model which invites community members to contribute to Sentient's development and rewards them accordingly. Tyagi stated that they need to create powerful, useful AI that stands at par with leading AI technologies.
Sentient Labs's vision for decentralized AI infrastructure
Nailwal has expressed his belief that AI centralization and its resulting safety issues are the key challenges humanity currently faces. He sees crypto and blockchain as the only ways to counter centralization. Nailwal defines Sentient as a cloud-sourced AI company using blockchain incentives but fundamentally an AI company. Tyagi noted that Sentient differs by focusing on what crypto can do for AI, creating a decentralised infrastructure that could take on the likes of Google and AWS.
Sentient Labs aims to enable a new AI economy
Tyagi emphasized the importance of AI agents for blockchain functions and the need to ensure they perform as expected. He stated that Sentient aims to enable a new AI economy where contributors are rewarded fairly. Nailwal has set the goal of building an open AGI which will require significant infrastructure. Tyagi noted that they are taking one step at a time and their aim is to have a strong team of experts who came together for this mission.
