AI startup Sentient bags $85M co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital

Blockchain-based AI startup Sentient has raised $85 million in a seed funding round co-led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures. 

The San Francisco-based firm was also backed by Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Republic, Arrington Capital and among other venture capital firms.

“We are thrilled to announce Sentient's $85M seed round, co-led by Founders Fund with 

Peter Thiel, alongside Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures. This marks a pivotal step in aligning AI development toward a community-built open AGI platform,” reads the company’s post on X. 

Co-founded by Sandeep Nailwal, Founder of Polygon, a blockchain platform, Sentient focuses on integrating blockchain technology with artificial intelligence to create decentralised AI solutions. Its open-source platform will enable developers, researchers, and businesses to be compensated for their contributions to AI tools. 

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The 'core contributors' of the company include Nailwal; Pramod Viswanath; Forrest G Hamrick, Professor of Engineering at Princeton University; Himanshu Tyagi, Associate Professor at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc); along with AI venture studio Sensys; bringing extensive expertise in blockchain technology, AI research, and ecosystem building.

“It [Sentient] will be built on Polygon Agglayer, and I will be helping them as a core contributor. This project is extremely ambitious and with model loyalty, it is trying to solve a problem that has never been approached from this direction. With this fundraise, Sentient already has some of the world's best AI minds joining it, and the AI team is getting pretty stacked with senior people from Google, Deepmind, and other top AI companies in the world engaged,” said Nailwal in a post on X (formerly Twitter). 

The company further stated that it is dedicated to ensuring ownership rights in AI development and initiating an ‘era of fair AI entrepreneurship’.

“Our vision at Sentient is to ensure AI benefits humanity as a whole. By creating an open platform for AGI development, we aim to distribute AI's benefits equitably and align its growth with global interests,” the company said.