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Share Dialog
Share Dialog
Message: The market hotspots rotate extremely fast. The key to becoming an early participant lies in efficient event tracking and precise rapid interpretation. We should judge the value of projects through multi-dimensional analysis of technology, team, capital flow, etc., and respond quickly at the right time.
The open-source AI platform Sentient has completed an $85 million seed funding round. This is likely the largest funding round announced for a crypto AI project this year. Raising so much money in the seed round is rare, even in the bustling bull market.
The investors are also extremely impressive. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures jointly led the round, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, and many other renowned and lesser-known VCs.
Normally, such an outstanding project should have been well-known beforehand, but this is the first time I've heard of it. When I joined the project's Discord server, I was surprised to find only just over 100 members. I felt relieved that the project had previously received little attention.
It doesn't matter if it hasn't gained much attention; there must be something impressive about this project that made VCs willing to invest their money. With this thought, I visited the project's official website again.
Did I click on the wrong website? A project that has raised so much money has a foundation website built on Notion. This once again lowered my expectations for VC projects. After the initial shock, let's take a closer look at the product roadmap.
Short-term Goals:
A community-co-created AI development resource management system (similar to Hugging Face)
A blockchain protocol for trading AI development resources (a new chain based on Polygon CDK)
Conducting the first event with the community
Mid-term Goals:
Establishing the OML file format standard (OML, a new concept created by Sentient, stands for Open, Monetizable, and Loyal. Sentient aims to develop such models)
AI services provided by the Sentient community (Sentient will be able to run models)
An AI resource usage tracking system based on the signature network (the underlying blockchain protocol can record the usage of AI models or datasets)
Launching multiple AICs for joint development (promoting several ecosystem projects)
Long-term Goals:
New foundational models built by community contributors (allowing AI companies to open-source their models on it)
An open AGI supported by OML models (yes, it wants to compete with OpenAI to see who will develop AGI first)
Incentive and monetization mechanisms for a new AI developer economy
Since these are goals, none of them exist yet. Currently, it's just a PPT fundraising.
Upon further examination, doesn't Sentient aim to create a Hugging Face with an underlying blockchain protocol, thereby adding an economic incentive layer? Hugging Face is an open-source platform for AI where users can publish and share pre-trained models, datasets, demo files, etc. It provides a complete AI development ecosystem and has become the most popular open-source machine learning community and platform globally.
With the business plan on Sentient's official website, even ChatGPT could probably write something similar. How could VCs invest so much money without looking at the fundamentals? Of course not. This year, numerous high FDV/low circulation projects have educated every naive investor.
The reason VCs invested so much money is undoubtedly because of Sandeep Nailwal, one of Sentient's four core contributors. Nailwal is the co-founder of Polygon, a top Web3 project in India. Among the four core contributors, there are also two Indian faces - Pramod Viswanath and Himanshu Tyagi, who were likely brought in by Nailwal to add credibility.
Sensys, a startup founded by Kenzi Wang, the co-founder of Symbolic Capital, will likely be the development company and main contributor to the Sentient AI platform. The official website also has just a few PPT slides, basically telling you "Coming soon."
Kenzi Wang was previously the Vice President and General Manager of Huobi Global. In 2017, he co-founded AU21 Capital with Guo Hongcai (also known as "Bao Yer"). "AU represents investing in great founders in Asia and the United States, and 21 represents 21 million BTC." In 2019, he met Sandeep Nailwal at Binance Labs, later invested in Polygon Labs, and co-founded Symbolic Capital with Nailwal.
Upon review, Sentient is simply a top-tier project of India-China collaboration. The blank webpage sparked the imagination of various VCs, who eagerly competed to be part of Sentient's first funding round.
Many people say that it's hard to evaluate early-stage projects and that the only thing to look at is the founders. Investing in projects has been simplified to investing in founders. Sandeep Nailwal has already successfully founded a project with a market value of billions. Who wouldn't want to be part of his new and imaginative venture?
What these foreign VCs don't know is that something similar has already happened in China. Not too long ago, Wang Huiwen, the second-in-command of Meituan, quickly raised $300 million for "Lightyear.ai" without a complete technical solution or any products. Within less than six months, it was acquired by Meituan and ended abruptly. History always repeats itself: few projects born with a silver spoon in their mouths make it to the end.
However, VCs may have no other choice. With so much money from LPs, they need to deploy it somewhere. Even if the project ultimately fails, the early-stage VCs can still exit unscathed. They know that retail investors may claim they won't take the handoff, but they will inevitably check if there are any airdrop opportunities.
Despite the uncertain future, perhaps we can view Sentient with more leniency. After all, AI is a challenging and competitive field, and companies in this sector could determine our human future. No one wants the future to be controlled by giants like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
With top-tier founders and luxury investments, Sentient, the new decentralized AI platform, at least has a better chance of surviving and competing with Web2 giants. Perhaps Sandeep Nailwal's bold crossover and the VCs' irrational FOMO will truly create a more OML (Open, Monetizable, and Loyal) landscape for AI development.
Sentient's innovation in the field of decentralization has attracted the attention of the tech community, creators, and investors. However, it is still in its early stages, and there are many opportunities for layout
Message: The market hotspots rotate extremely fast. The key to becoming an early participant lies in efficient event tracking and precise rapid interpretation. We should judge the value of projects through multi-dimensional analysis of technology, team, capital flow, etc., and respond quickly at the right time.
The open-source AI platform Sentient has completed an $85 million seed funding round. This is likely the largest funding round announced for a crypto AI project this year. Raising so much money in the seed round is rare, even in the bustling bull market.
The investors are also extremely impressive. Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures jointly led the round, with participation from Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, and many other renowned and lesser-known VCs.
Normally, such an outstanding project should have been well-known beforehand, but this is the first time I've heard of it. When I joined the project's Discord server, I was surprised to find only just over 100 members. I felt relieved that the project had previously received little attention.
It doesn't matter if it hasn't gained much attention; there must be something impressive about this project that made VCs willing to invest their money. With this thought, I visited the project's official website again.
Did I click on the wrong website? A project that has raised so much money has a foundation website built on Notion. This once again lowered my expectations for VC projects. After the initial shock, let's take a closer look at the product roadmap.
Short-term Goals:
A community-co-created AI development resource management system (similar to Hugging Face)
A blockchain protocol for trading AI development resources (a new chain based on Polygon CDK)
Conducting the first event with the community
Mid-term Goals:
Establishing the OML file format standard (OML, a new concept created by Sentient, stands for Open, Monetizable, and Loyal. Sentient aims to develop such models)
AI services provided by the Sentient community (Sentient will be able to run models)
An AI resource usage tracking system based on the signature network (the underlying blockchain protocol can record the usage of AI models or datasets)
Launching multiple AICs for joint development (promoting several ecosystem projects)
Long-term Goals:
New foundational models built by community contributors (allowing AI companies to open-source their models on it)
An open AGI supported by OML models (yes, it wants to compete with OpenAI to see who will develop AGI first)
Incentive and monetization mechanisms for a new AI developer economy
Since these are goals, none of them exist yet. Currently, it's just a PPT fundraising.
Upon further examination, doesn't Sentient aim to create a Hugging Face with an underlying blockchain protocol, thereby adding an economic incentive layer? Hugging Face is an open-source platform for AI where users can publish and share pre-trained models, datasets, demo files, etc. It provides a complete AI development ecosystem and has become the most popular open-source machine learning community and platform globally.
With the business plan on Sentient's official website, even ChatGPT could probably write something similar. How could VCs invest so much money without looking at the fundamentals? Of course not. This year, numerous high FDV/low circulation projects have educated every naive investor.
The reason VCs invested so much money is undoubtedly because of Sandeep Nailwal, one of Sentient's four core contributors. Nailwal is the co-founder of Polygon, a top Web3 project in India. Among the four core contributors, there are also two Indian faces - Pramod Viswanath and Himanshu Tyagi, who were likely brought in by Nailwal to add credibility.
Sensys, a startup founded by Kenzi Wang, the co-founder of Symbolic Capital, will likely be the development company and main contributor to the Sentient AI platform. The official website also has just a few PPT slides, basically telling you "Coming soon."
Kenzi Wang was previously the Vice President and General Manager of Huobi Global. In 2017, he co-founded AU21 Capital with Guo Hongcai (also known as "Bao Yer"). "AU represents investing in great founders in Asia and the United States, and 21 represents 21 million BTC." In 2019, he met Sandeep Nailwal at Binance Labs, later invested in Polygon Labs, and co-founded Symbolic Capital with Nailwal.
Upon review, Sentient is simply a top-tier project of India-China collaboration. The blank webpage sparked the imagination of various VCs, who eagerly competed to be part of Sentient's first funding round.
Many people say that it's hard to evaluate early-stage projects and that the only thing to look at is the founders. Investing in projects has been simplified to investing in founders. Sandeep Nailwal has already successfully founded a project with a market value of billions. Who wouldn't want to be part of his new and imaginative venture?
What these foreign VCs don't know is that something similar has already happened in China. Not too long ago, Wang Huiwen, the second-in-command of Meituan, quickly raised $300 million for "Lightyear.ai" without a complete technical solution or any products. Within less than six months, it was acquired by Meituan and ended abruptly. History always repeats itself: few projects born with a silver spoon in their mouths make it to the end.
However, VCs may have no other choice. With so much money from LPs, they need to deploy it somewhere. Even if the project ultimately fails, the early-stage VCs can still exit unscathed. They know that retail investors may claim they won't take the handoff, but they will inevitably check if there are any airdrop opportunities.
Despite the uncertain future, perhaps we can view Sentient with more leniency. After all, AI is a challenging and competitive field, and companies in this sector could determine our human future. No one wants the future to be controlled by giants like OpenAI, Google, and Meta.
With top-tier founders and luxury investments, Sentient, the new decentralized AI platform, at least has a better chance of surviving and competing with Web2 giants. Perhaps Sandeep Nailwal's bold crossover and the VCs' irrational FOMO will truly create a more OML (Open, Monetizable, and Loyal) landscape for AI development.
Sentient's innovation in the field of decentralization has attracted the attention of the tech community, creators, and investors. However, it is still in its early stages, and there are many opportunities for layout
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