Author: Nancy, PANews

Recently, the AI ​​project Sentient, which has received huge amounts of financing simply by innovating the open AI vision and without launching any substantial products, has caused market controversy and made Sandeep Nailwal, one of the builders behind it, a hot topic.

Sandeep is the co-founder and executive chairman of Polygon Labs. At the end of May this year, he announced that he would also serve as chief business officer, responsible for overseeing strategies related to the solutions developed by Polygon. At the same time, he is also a very frequent angel investor.

According to statistics from Web3 asset data platform RootData, Sandeep has invested in about 124 crypto projects so far. In terms of project types, infrastructure, DeFi, CeFi, L1 and AI are more favored by Sandeep; in terms of financing rounds, the disclosed seed rounds and A rounds account for as high as 67.4%, and the valuation is usually between millions and tens of millions of dollars; in terms of operating status, 91.9% of the projects have been launched on the mainnet, and 7 projects have ceased operations.

This year, Sandeep has announced that he has participated in the construction/investment of 18 crypto projects. According to PANews, they are mainly in AI, ZK, DID, DEX and infrastructure tracks, of which AI projects account for more than one-fifth. In terms of the number of investment institutions in the projects, the average number of investors is 18.9, with the highest number reaching 38. Institutions such as Polychain Capital, HashKey Capital, Sreeram Kannan, Animoca Brands and OKX Ventures have a higher chance of co-investing; in terms of investment rounds, 9 of these projects are mainly seed rounds, and many projects have already shown high valuations in the seed round stage, with the highest seed round financing amount reaching US$85 million, and the highest disclosed valuation reaching US$400 million. In addition, many of these projects are Polygon ecological projects or have certain cooperative relationships.

AI

Sentient

The open source AI platform Sentient is committed to building open source AI models through community contributions to address the centralization and security ethics issues in the current AI field. Sentient plans to build on Polygon or create its own chain through the Polygon Chain Development Kit (CDK). One of Sentient's core contributors is Sandeep Nailwal, and EigenLayer founder and CEO Sreeram Kannan has served as an advisor from beginning to end.

In the $85 million seed round financing recently announced by Sentient, Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures led the investment, as well as 26 institutional/individual investors including Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, Canonical Crypto and Foresight Ventures.

It is worth mentioning that Sentient was founded by Kenzi Wang, co-founder of Symbolic Capital, who is also a consultant to Polygon Labs and former vice president of Huobi Global. In May of this year, Kenzi Wang, Sandeep and other Polygon executives were exposed for maliciously planning a MEME coin scam, but the latter did not respond to this.

Prodia

Prodia is a distributed GPU network for AI reasoning solutions, designed to leverage Web3 infrastructure to provide more efficient and low-cost cloud computing services. Most of Prodia's core team members come from the storage project Storj, including founder Monty Anderson, who was the head of R&D at Storj Labs, CEO Shawn Wilkinson, who is the founder and CSO of Storj, and chief engineer Monty Anderson, who is a senior software engineer and R&D director at Storj.

In July this year, Prodia announced the completion of a $15 million seed round of financing from 13 investors, including the lead investor Dragonfly Capital, as well as HashKey Capital, Web3.com, Index Ventures, Symbolic Capital, OKX Ventures, and angel investors Balaji Srinivasan, Polygon founder Sandeep Nailwal, and Bloq co-founder Matthew Roszak.

OpenLedger

OpenLedger focuses on building permissionless, data-oriented infrastructure for AI development. This month, OpenLedger announced that it had raised $8 million in seed round financing from 19 investors, including Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital, with participation from HashKey Capital, Finality Capital, Hash3, STIX, MH Ventures, EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan, Sandeep Nailwal, Manta Network co-founder Kenny Li and others.

Sahara

Sahara is a trustless, permissionless and privacy-centric decentralized AI network that can create customized autonomous knowledge agents (Sahara KA) for individuals and businesses. Sahara announced the completion of a $6 million seed round of financing in March this year, including the lead investor Polychain Capital, as well as 14 investors including Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel and Sandeep Nailwal.

ZK

Lumoz

Lumoz (formerly Opside) is a decentralized ZK-RaaS platform that aims to improve the efficiency of zero-knowledge computing and provide users with a global, open and fair computing platform. It is an officially certified CDK technology provider by Polygon.

In April this year, Lumoz announced the completion of a $6 million token financing with a valuation of $120 million. This round included seven institutional/individual investors including OKX Ventures, HashKey Capital, KuCoin Ventures, Comma3 Ventures, Kronos Ventures, Kernel Ventures and Sandeep Nailwal.

Succinct Labs

Succinct Labs is a zero-knowledge proof infrastructure service provider that is committed to lowering the threshold for using zero-knowledge proof technology and helping all developers access the technology, thereby accelerating its adoption. In March, Succinct Labs announced the completion of a $55 million seed round and Series A financing round from 16 investors, including lead investor Paradigm, as well as Robot Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Geometry, ZK Validator, Sandeep Nailwal and Sreeram Kannan.

DID

Private ID

Privado ID (Polygon ID) is a digital identity solution spun off from Polygon Labs, designed to give individuals control over their own data. Privado ID's team members come from Polygon co-founders David Schwartz and Antoni Martin, who serve as CEO and COO respectively, Jordi Baylina, a key figure in the development of Polygon zkEVM, serves as a technical advisor, and Sandeep Nailwal serves as a growth advisor.

Humanity Protocol

Humanity Protocol is a DID protocol based on Polygon CDK, dedicated to using palmprint recognition technology and zero-knowledge proof to ensure user privacy and security, and aims to provide an easily accessible and non-intrusive method for establishing human proof in Web3 applications. At the end of February, Humanity Protocol announced that it had received strategic investment from 23 investors, including Hashed, CMCC, Cypher Capital, Foresight Ventures, Animoca Brands founder Yat Siu and Sandeep Nailwal, etc.

DEX

Ooga Boga

Ooga Booga is the liquidity aggregator of the Berachain ecosystem, aiming to support Berachain's goal of becoming the most capital-efficient blockchain. Ooga Booga raised $1 million in seed funding from 28 investors at a valuation of $10 million, including Cypher Capital, CitizenX, Rubik, Rana and Sandeep Nailwal.

Dolomite

Dolomite is a decentralized trading protocol in the Arbitrum ecosystem. It has received $900,000 in strategic financing from 14 investors, including Sandeep Nailwal, Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron, and DCF GOD.

other

Mystiko Network

Mystiko Network is the Web3 infrastructure layer, and Mystiko SDK is a universal ZK SDK that provides scalability, interoperability, privacy, and artificial intelligence to every blockchain/DApp.

At the end of March this year, Mystiko.Network announced that it had raised US$18 million in seed round financing from 11 investors with a valuation of US$400 million. Sequoia Capital India/SEA (Peak XV Partners) led the investment, with participation from Samsung Next, Hashkey Capital, Mirana, Signum, Coinlist and Sandeep Nailwal.

GAM3S.GG

GAM3S.GG is a Web3 game information platform that aims to allow gamers to join Web3 through game discovery, content, live broadcasts, community activities, etc. In the strategic round of financing announced in March this year, GAM3S.GG received $2 million in strategic financing from 31 investors including Sandeep Nailwal, YGG co-founder Gabby Dizon, Sky Mavis & Ronin co-founder Jiho Zirlin, etc.

Solayer

Solayer is the Solana ecosystem re-staking protocol, which aims to use economic security and high-quality execution as decentralized cloud infrastructure to achieve a higher degree of consensus and block space customization for application developers. This month, Solayer announced the completion of Builders Round financing, with 20 investors including Solana Labs co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, Marinade core contributor Michael Repetny, Solend founder Rooter, Tensor co-founder Richard Wu and Sandeep Nailwal participating. Although Solayer did not disclose the specific amount of this round of financing, it expressed its hope a few months ago to raise $8 million at a valuation of $80 million in a seed round led by Hack VC.

Gamic

Gamic is a Web3 community application that aims to provide a new interactive platform for the Web3 field. Incubated by Binance Labs and developed by Fundamental Labs, Gamic announced in May that it had successfully raised $1.8 million through multiple rounds of financing, including nine investors including Polygon Ventures, Gate.io, Mapleblock, Mulana, Double Peak Group and Sandeep Nailwal.

Ava Protocol

Ava Protocol is an intent-based Eigenlayer AVS that seamlessly supports privacy-driven transactions for many use cases such as DeFi, NFTs, and games. In June, Ava Protocol announced the completion of an initial investment of $5.5 million and an additional seed round of $4.5 million, including 13 investors including Electric Capital, Taisu Ventures, and Sandeep Nailwal.

Lava Foundation

Lava Foundation is a newly established non-profit organization dedicated to developing a modular blockchain network Lava, which focuses on providing data access services through remote procedure calls (RPC). In early May, Lava Foundation announced the successful fundraising of $11 million in token funds, including seven investors including Animoca Brands, Gate.io Ventures, Coingecko Ventures and Sandeep Nailwal.

Layer3

Layer3 is a token distribution protocol that enables protocols to distribute tokens more efficiently by unifying user activities across multiple blockchains and applications. Currently, the project is developing a new AI protocol for optimizing token distribution strategies, which is expected to be launched later this year.

Layer3 has completed multiple rounds of financing, including the announcement in June this year that it had received US$15 million in Series A financing from 38 investors, led by ParaFi and Greenfield Capital, and participation from Sandeep Nailwal, Electric and others in 2022.

Beacon

Beacon, a Web3 startup accelerator founded by Sandeep Nailwal, announced in February that it had raised more than $150 million in funding in the past year.