Author: Karen, Foresight News
Last night, the open-source AI platform Sentient announced the completion of an $85 million seed round financing. The round was led by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, and Canonical Crypto.
This substantial financing has attracted significant attention in the current relatively quiet market environment. Notably, the core brain trust and contributors of Sentient include the co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal, and the founder and CEO of EigenLayer, Sreeram Kannan. What has enabled Sentient to attract such widespread attention and interest?
What is Sentient?
Sentient is an AI research organization dedicated to building an open and general artificial intelligence (AGI) economy. It is developing a platform and protocol that allows open-source AI developers to monetize their models, data, and other innovations. Here, developers can collaborate to build powerful AI alerts and become key stakeholders in driving AI transformation and prosperity in the new open AGI economy.
In the face of the current lack of incentive mechanisms and the difficulty of going it alone in the AI field, Sentient has proposed the "OML" (Open, Monetize, Loyalty) model concept. It aims to promote a shared open AGI economy through the OML model, creating a system involving millions of AI agents and billions of users, providing inexhaustible power for the innovation and development of downstream applications.
Sandeep Nailwal, strategic advisor to Sentient and co-founder of Polygon, stated, "Sentient will be built on top of the Polygon AggLayer and will reward engineers for tasks such as tagging and refining data, as well as other activities related to training artificial intelligence models. If successful, Sentient may change the relationship between humans and AI." Sandeep Nailwal also mentioned that he is a core contributor to Sentient.
In addition, Sentient will build an unrestricted collaboration and discussion platform to ensure fair recognition of incentives and contributions for each participant. It will also promote the collision and fusion of innovative thinking while enhancing the transparency and credibility of the entire system.
According to Sandeep Nailwal, the idea for Sentient originated from a conversation between him and Sreeram Kannan, the founder of EigenLayer, discussing how cryptocurrency could solve the decentralization and security issues of AI, and how Polygon could play a role in this structural transformation. This conversation planted the seeds of hope for Sentient. Sreeram Kannan then shared this concept with Professor Pramod Viswanath of Princeton University and Professor Himanshu Tyagi of the Indian Institute of Science, coincidentally aligning with their research, ultimately leading to the creation of Sentient.
Sentient Core Brain Trust and Contributors
According to Sentient's official statement, the Sentient Foundation is a non-profit organization. The advisory committee includes Sandeep Nailwal, two engineering professors, and a risk studio:
- Princeton University's engineering professor, Forrest G. Hamrick, Pramod Viswanath: Responsible for research guidance.
- Indian Institute of Science's engineering professor, Himanshu Tyagi: Responsible for technical guidance.
- Co-founder of Polygon, Sandeep Nailwal: Responsible for strategic guidance.
- The risk studio Sensys, responsible for creating products and applications for Sentient, will be led by Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Symbolic Capital.
It is worth mentioning that Pramod Viswanath, responsible for research guidance, has made outstanding contributions in the field of wireless communication. During his time as a founding engineer at Flarion Technologies in 2020, he helped develop the framework that became the basis for 4G LTE wireless networks. Pramod Viswanath has also co-authored the textbook "Fundamentals of Wireless Communication" and is a co-founder of the blockchain startup Kaleidscope.
The research direction of Pramod Viswanath's laboratory is closely related to Sentient's future blueprint. Ben, who previously co-taught a course with Professor Pramod Viswanath at Princeton University, mentioned that some projects from the course, such as building AI applications for blockchain and building blockchain applications for AI, may be implemented on the Sentient platform. Ben also revealed the research directions of Pramod's laboratory, including AI agents for smart contract generation and verification, intelligent blockchain wallets for automatic fraud detection, AI-driven blockchain browsers, gas prediction models on-chain and off-chain, AI-driven practicality, Smart DAOs and Data DAOs, and AI-driven low-cost cross-chain path detection.
The lineup of contributors for Sentient is also noteworthy. The official list includes 11 contributors, with 4 from the University of Washington and 4 from Princeton University, mostly researchers or professors in the fields of AI and blockchain. Sandeep Nailwal also mentioned that the Sentient AI team includes senior professionals from Google, Deepmind, and other leading AI companies.
Sentient Roadmap
Sentient has a relatively clear roadmap, aiming to build the Sentient AI Platform and blockchain protocol in the short to medium term. Subsequently, it will construct new foundational models built by the community, open AGI supported by the OML model, and launch economic incentives and monetization for AI builders. This quarter, Sentient will enter the testnet phase.
Conclusion
As Dovey Wan, the founder of Primitive Ventures, stated, we are witnessing the convergence of several trends, including "binary code becoming currency code," "machine programs becoming social contract programs," and "human language becoming programming language." This convergence heralds the arrival of a new era, embracing the principles of decentralization, transparency, and collective ownership. Franklin Bi, partner at Pantera Capital, further expressed that "open systems will surpass closed systems, allowing Open AI to surpass OpenAI."
The grand vision held by Sentient, "to ensure that AI benefits all of humanity," is not a mere competition with existing AI solutions, but rather aims to pave the way for the intelligent leap of the next generation of AI. Of course, the details of its implementation and operation are still to be perfected, but each attempt represents an exploration and practice of future possibilities.
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