Sentient, an open-source development platform for artificial intelligence (AI), has raised $85 million in a seed round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund along with Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures.
The money will support the hiring of engineers and the development of Sentient’s open AI platform. The company wants to enable AI developers to monetize their open-source models and data, similar to the Super Intelligence Alliance ecosystem.
Sentient argues that the current dominance of closed-source AI has concentrated power in the hands of a small number of organizations, and that open-source AI lacks strong incentives for developers to become equal stakeholders.
Behind the startup are Sandeep Nailwal, founder of Polygon; Pramod Viswanath, a professor at Princeton and co-inventor of the technology that powers the 4G wireless standard; and Himanshu Tyagi, a professor at the Indian Institute of Science.