Sentient debuts AI chatbot with 15 agents to rival Perplexity

Blockchain-based AI startup Sentient has introduced Sentient Chat, a consumer-friendly agentic chatbot similar to Perplexity AI. 

The platform offers 15 natively integrated AI agents—a first in the industry—and claims to have attracted over 1 million early access sign-ups within 24 hours.

Sentient Chat made its debut at the Open AGI Summit during ETH Denver, where it was showcased to an audience of 1,500+ crypto and AI developers. With this launch, Sentient has entered the competitive AI chatbot space, joining existing players such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral AI.

Currently, four AI agents are available, with more rolling out soon, which enable users to invoke specialised functions and automate tasks directly within the interface. 

It also includes features such as a real-time search function that integrates Dobby’s knowledge base with live internet data, ensuring up-to-date responses beyond static training sets, positioning it as a strong alternative to Perplexity and Google. The chatbot adopts a human-like conversational tone, with evaluations from Confident AI rating the Dobby model highly for natural dialogue compared to its peers.

Powered by Dobby, the world’s first community-owned AI model, Sentient Chat builds on a platform that previously saw 660,000+ users engage through a record-breaking ownership mint. Holders of Dobby NFTs, linked to Sentient’s Loyal AI model, receive priority early access to Sentient Chat. The early access waitlist and raffle opened on February 25.

The launch of Sentient Chat builds on Sentient’s earlier progress with Dobby, which introduced human-like conversation to AI models—a trend later mirrored by competitors, including xAI’s upcoming “unhinged” Grok update.

In a statement, Sentient noted that this launch builds on its earlier advancements with Dobby, which pioneered human-like conversations in AI—later adopted by peers like xAI.

Last year, Sentient 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 $85 million 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.