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

The funding round also saw participation from strategic investors including Arrington Capital, Canonical, Dao5, Delphi, Dispersion, Ethereal, Folius, Foresight, Hack VC, Hashkey, Hypersphere, IDG, Mirana, Nomad, Primitive Ventures, Protagonist, Republic, Robot Ventures, Sky9, Spartan, Symbolic Capital, and Topology.

With the new investment, the AI-driven blockchain startup aims to develop an open-source AI platform and expand its team by hiring experts in AI research and blockchain engineering. Additionally, it plans to bolster its market presence by building partnerships with leading academic institutions and organisations.

Founded by Polygon Labs co-founder and executive chairman Sandeep Nailwal, academician & researcher Pramod Viswanath, and Himanshu Tyagi, the platform aims to democratise AI development, ensuring that AI benefits humanity as a whole.

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Speaking during the fundraising event, co-founder and researcher Tyagi said, “We’re not just another AI project. We’re building an open world through blockchain to achieve transparency and fairness. When our AI is used, everyone who contributed will be rewarded through the blockchain protocol.”

Nailwal also posted on X.com, “With this fundraising, 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. By building an open platform for AGI development, we aim to ensure that the benefits of AI are distributed equitably and that its development aligns with the interests of humanity as a whole.”

Joey Krug, Partner at Founders Fund, also commented, "Currently, anyone is able to just copy models without paying for them, and Sentient aims to solve this incentive problem which disincentivizes open-source AI."