Network Value 85 Million? A Brief Analysis of the Huge Financing AI Project Sentient Led by Polygon Co-founder

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

The demand for AI in the crypto space is still up for discussion, but it seems that the crypto world cannot do without the narrative of AI.

"No AI, no crypto" has become a representative phenomenon of this cycle. Moreover, it appears that the more AI stories are told, the more people are buying into them.

On July 2, the open-source AI collaboration platform Sentient announced a funding round of $85 million, led by top VCs such as Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures, with follow-on investments from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, and Delphi Ventures, marking another wave of massive funding.

In this round of "atypical bull market," this substantial seed round financing stands out remarkably. The last phenomenal AI cash cow can be traced back to Bittensor?

Is Sentient something special or just another wave of cash-grabbing hype? Let's interpret it.

A Sino-Indian Co-Produced AI "Trailer"?

According to a tweet from Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal, the birth of Sentient originated from a conversation he had with EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan about the future development of crypto and AI. Subsequently, Sreeram Kannan shared this conversation with Princeton University professor Pramod Viswanath (co-inventor of the 4G wireless standard supporting technology Flash OFDM) and Indian Institute of Science professor Himanshu Tyagi, and their research coincidentally aligned with the discussion, leading to the official launch of Sentient after a spark of ideas.

Interestingly, among the four core contributors of the project, three are Indians, and several institutions founded by Chinese individuals are among the investors. Are both sides collaborating to make something big happen?

With both money and talent, what does this Sino-Indian co-produced "AI blockbuster" plan to do in this round of crypto AI cycle?

We reviewed the project's materials and can only say that this Sino-Indian co-production is still in the trailer stage, with the main feature yet to come.

Making Open Source More Sustainable

Currently, AI technology is monopolized by a few corporate organizations, and there is a lack of sufficient incentives for developers to create open-source AI. As AI develops, open-source developers do not have long-term benefits to support them, and to achieve better development outcomes, collaboration among developers is necessary. It is evident that the development status of open-source AI is more challenging than expected, let alone competing with the powerful AI held by monopolistic organizations.

Yes, AI should be open and free, but if insisting on open source leads to starvation, then the issue of "antitrust" must be put on hold.

Sentient officially claims to be an "Open AGI Foundation," aiming to promote AI innovation through a community-driven approach.

To this end, Sentient plans to build an AI platform based on Polygon Agglayer, allowing developers to collaborate and monetize their contributions. Developers can quickly collaborate through the platform and turn their contributions into cash. By incentivizing developers, Open AGI can develop better and further.

OML Model

To realize the platform vision of "providing shelter for all the cold scholars," Sentient has introduced a special hosted AI model "OML," which stands for Open (open), Monetizable (monetizable), and Loyal (loyal).

This framework aims to ensure that the platform maintains openness, monetization capability, and loyalty to the community during the developers' usage process.

Roadmap

The Sentient testnet will launch this quarter. The official documentation outlines Sentient's plans for short, medium, and long-term development paths. The short and medium-term goals focus on community collaboration on the Sentient AI platform (launching the first community event), developing on-chain protocols, ecosystem building, and establishing OML model standards. The long-term goals look towards AI models built through community collaboration, the future of open AGI supported by OML, and innovative incentives for AI developers.

Conclusion

Sentient has a significant background and good ideas, but many Web3 AI projects are already addressing issues of contribution incentives and ownership; Sentient is not the first to bring this up. Moreover, with such massive funding, there were only a few people paying attention to this project before, and now Sentient is still at a stage where no products have been launched.

As for why so many institutions are willing to invest so much money in Sentient, which is still in its whiteboard phase, it may stem from trust in "Sandeep's leadership." After all, in such an atypical bull market, it's better to invest in places with stories, people, and backgrounds than to hold onto cash. The AI + Polygon combination also provides a justification for investors, right? After all, as the project grows larger, the ones footing the bill for the feast will certainly not be the VCs themselves.

After several rounds of so-called king-level projects, investing in crypto projects seems to be increasingly about investing in people and organizing projects;

You cannot evaluate whether this is a mere replication of an industry upstream where "making money is as easy as breathing," or a genuine insight into technological trends with the courage to bet on them.

However, as long as the market rises, it is justice and the future; as long as it falls, it is a scam and a bubble.

To what extent Sentient can strive for "sustainable development of AI and improvement of personnel security" in the future, whether it can truly differentiate itself from others and capture the limited attention of users, let us stay tuned.