Founders Fund-backed Sentient launches open-source 'composable AI ecosystem'

Sentient, an AI unicorn backed by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, is opening its "Artificial General Intelligence" network, calling it "the first truly composable AI ecosystem where agents, models, and data sources work together."

The network is powered, in part, by AI agents deployed on blockchains like Base, BNB, Polygon, Arbitrum, Celo, and Near, among others.

The startup is also launching its consumer interface, called Sentient Chat, which reportedly garnered 2 million waitlisted users. 

"Sentient’s mission is to ensure that [AGI] is open-source and not controlled by any single entity," the Sentient team wrote in an announcement, explicitly calling out closed ecosystems like OpenAI and Anthropic, two of the largest LLM operators, as well as "siloed" AI marketplaces, like AWS AI, built by Amazon.

Further, the platform is built around "a token-based incentive system" that rewards developers and data providers with tokens "whenever their agents, models, or data are used." Users can stake tokens to support particular agents.

"Unlike traditional pay-per-API models that charge developers without offering ownership or profit-sharing, Sentient rewards contributors with a direct stake in the network’s growth," the team noted. 

Large crypto backers, Framework Ventures and Pantera Capital, also participated in Sentient’s $85 million seed round in July 2024. Arrington Capital, Delphi, Dao5, Ethereal, and Robot Ventures are also backers, according to Sentient’s website.

What is Sentient

Sentient reportedly collates over 10 AI models, 40 specialized agents, and 50 data sources to generate “real-time” outputs for users, including Web3 sources. An AI agent is a software program that uses artificial intelligence to perform tasks, make decisions, or interact with users and environments autonomously.

“When thousands of developers can contribute specialized agents that automatically work together, you get emergent intelligence that no single closed system can match,” Himanshu Tyagi, co-founder of Sentient, said in a statement.

Sentient Chat will act as an interface for users to access Sentient’s large orchestration model, which is reportedly capable of generating anything from detailed research summaries to travel plans.

Of particular interest to crypto users, Sentient is also launching a "Token Reports Space" that compiles research and pricing data to produce crypto market analyses.

According to the Sentient Foundation, the project is incorporating DeFi and other “domain-specific corpora” as part of its AI training pipeline for its Dobby AI model. Last week, it also unveiled an open-source “multi-agent framework” called the Recursive Open Meta Agent, or ROMA, that enables developers to “plug in different LLMs, tools, or prompts” and run different concurrent prompts.

The startup also previously unveiled GRID, an open-source network designed to build and monetize AGI through a collaborative ecosystem, which has reportedly gained over 100 partners, including decentralized AI projects CrunchDAO, Mizu, and Sapien.

"Corporate labs will always optimize for the broadest, safest average. Communities, given open-source tools, can optimize for themselves," Sentient wrote on X.