A total of $8 million in financing, can FLock.io achieve AI democratization?

At the beginning of 2024, the rising star in the Web3 AI field, FLock.io, announced the successful completion of a $6 million seed round financing, led by Lightspeed Faction and Tagus Capital, with participation from well-known investment institutions such as DCG, OKX Ventures, and Volt Capital.
So far, FLock.io's total financing has reached $8 million. It is understood that this funding will be used to expand the team and advance its innovative AI training platform, which is based on federated learning technology, aiming to protect data privacy and promote decentralization.

FLock.io's CEO, Jiahao Sun, stated in an interview with The Block that despite the successful financing, the board structure of FLock.io will remain unchanged after this round of financing, as the company is still in the future Simple Agreement for Future Equity (SAFE) stage. FLock.io plans to use this funding to expand its team size and accelerate the development of its AI training platform.
Here is an introduction to the FLock.io project.

There are serious pain points in the AI track, hindering the promotion of this imaginative technology

In the AI track, a heavy obstacle is hindering the progress and popularization of technology: low public participation, insufficient privacy protection, and strict control of AI development and hosting by a few large companies.
Currently, innovation in the AI field is severely obstructed by centralized control. This control model means that decision-making power, data storage, and control are concentrated in the hands of a few authorities. For example, large language model (LLM) providers like OpenAI can monitor all interactions users have with the model, which not only threatens user privacy but also limits the diversity and innovation of the models. Furthermore, due to the comprehensive control of centralized institutions, the outputs of the models lack transparency and regulatory oversight, leading to increasing issues of model bias and inaccuracies.
Despite the challenges, the future of the AI industry remains hopeful. In 2023, investments in AI technology reached an astonishing $25 billion, demonstrating strong confidence in AI becoming a trillion-dollar industry. The issues of decentralization and high barriers to entry in the AI field are gradually being recognized and addressed, and the introduction of blockchain and cryptocurrency technology offers new possibilities for solving these problems, particularly in enhancing the interoperability of AI applications and lowering the entry barriers.

Aiming to promote AI democratization, can FLock.io break the monopoly of large companies on AI technology?

Against this backdrop, FLock.io has emerged, dedicated to fundamentally changing the game of AI creation through its community-driven, privacy-centric platform.
FLock.io is a revolutionary end-to-end AI co-creation platform that redefines the training, fine-tuning, and inference processes of AI models by integrating decentralized machine learning technology on-chain. This innovative platform not only empowers the general public to contribute knowledge and enrich AI models but also promotes the democratization of AI technology while protecting privacy.

FLock.io's vision is to redefine the AI training field through federated learning—a decentralized machine learning approach that emphasizes data privacy. One of the core features of the platform is the use of open leaderboards to inspire a competitive spirit within the machine learning community and set rewards for various model training tasks, thereby driving innovation and development in AI technology.
FLock.io's vision is to achieve AI democratization through three foundational pillars: community-owned models, privacy-protecting data, and decentralized computing. The platform has successfully nurtured a diverse range of AI models, from intelligent agents to complex trading and aggregation bots, opening a new era for the accessibility of AI tools.
FLock.io not only encourages the general public to participate in the contribution and fine-tuning of AI models but also aims to break the monopoly of large companies on AI innovation, making AI tools more accessible and diverse. The platform integrates various tools such as intelligent agents, trading, and aggregation bots, heralding the arrival of a new era of AI built and owned by the community.

In summary, FLock.io is not only a driver of AI technology innovation but also a key force in the process of AI democratization. By lowering participation barriers, protecting user privacy, and promoting community-driven innovation, FLock.io is bringing unprecedented changes to the AI field.

An overview of FLock.io's products and technological innovations, insights into the future trends of crypto assets + AI

FLock.io has not only achieved technological innovations but also addressed a range of issues for users through its products and services, including the centralization control of AI models, access restrictions, model bias, and insufficient compensation for data contributors. By implementing decentralized learning, FLock.io ensures the security of user data while employing technologies such as zkFL, homomorphic encryption, and secure multi-party computation (SMPC) to provide additional protection for data privacy. Below are a series of technological and product features of FLock.io:

1. Community-owned models: FLock.io encourages the community to actively participate in expanding and improving the knowledge base of AI models, ensuring diversity and richness of input sources while strictly maintaining data privacy standards;
2. Privacy-protecting data: By adopting cutting-edge technologies such as federated learning, zkFL, homomorphic encryption, and secure multi-party computation (SMPC), FLock.io ensures that user data is securely retained on users' devices, avoiding centralized data collection and potential misuse;
3. Decentralized computing: FLock.io utilizes decentralized computing power to train and fine-tune AI models, a method that not only achieves scalability and reduces costs but also enhances security.
4. Co-creation platform: FLock.io's co-creation platform allows the community to actively participate in the expansion and improvement of AI models, such as the BTC-GPT project, which achieved 5,000 calls in just three weeks, showcasing the power of community contributions;
5. Federated learning client: FLock.io provides developers with a federated learning client that supports decentralized model training and validation, emphasizing its commitment to data privacy.

As the AI ecosystem transitions from Web2's centralized services to Web3's decentralized networks, FLock.io is at the forefront of this transformation, promoting the process of model training and fine-tuning by incentivizing decentralized data contributions and coordinating computing power within a decentralized framework, providing strong support for the development of the Web3 AI ecosystem.