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Sentient is a decentralized AI startup founded in early 2024 by Polygon co‑founder Sandeep Nailwal, Princeton professor Pramod Viswanath, and Himanshu Tyagi. It has raised an $85 million seed round and announced a $42 million Open Source AGI Grant and Investment Program aimed at funding open‑source AI models and providing compute resources. The organization plans to release Open Deep Search (ODS), an open‑source AI search framework that it claims matches or exceeds the performance of leading proprietary models on benchmarks, and to embed ODS in a free Sentient Chat application for public use. Sentient’s leadership promotes an open‑source, decentralized AI ecosystem supported by blockchain infrastructure, arguing that this approach can democratize access and avoid concentration of AI power, though they acknowledge challenges around monetization and accountability.
Sentient launched a $42 million Open Source AGI Grant and Investment Program to fund open‑source AI development.
The startup raised an $85 million seed round co‑led by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures.
Sentient’s Open Deep Search claims to outperform Perplexity’s Sonar Reasoning Pro on the FRAMES benchmark and match OpenAI’s top models on simpler queries.
The company plans to release ODS through a free Sentient Chat app and later open‑source the codebase.
Sentient promotes a blockchain‑based transaction layer for AI agents, citing scalability and decentralization benefits.
The program provides $42 million in non‑dilutive grants and startup investments to support developers building open‑source AI models and to supply compute resources.
According to the company, ODS outperforms Perplexity AI’s Sonar Reasoning Pro on the FRAMES benchmark and delivers accuracy comparable to OpenAI’s leading models on simpler questions.
Sentient Chat is in early access with a waitlist of over 1.75 million users and is expected to become generally available within two months, after which the ODS codebase will be open‑sourced.
Investors include Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, and other backers who contributed to the $85 million seed round.
The company cites monetization, the high cost of running large models, and the need for accountability mechanisms as key hurdles.
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