The highly anticipated AI project Sahara AI officially launched its first phase testnet - the data service platform, selecting over 10,000 early contributors from 780,000 applicants, making the whitelist competition fierce. Why has Sahara AI secured a total funding of 43 million dollars led by Polychain, Binance Labs, and Pantera Capital? Today, let's take a look at what makes Sahara AI different.
1. What is the mission of Sahara AI?
Sahara AI is a decentralized AI blockchain platform that aims to revolutionize the development, deployment, and monetization of AI assets (including AI models, datasets, intelligent agents, etc.) through its innovative AI asset concept and proprietary infrastructure. Whether you are a professional developer, entrepreneur, or ordinary AI enthusiast, you can easily build or deploy personalized AI products on the Sahara AI platform and gain real benefits by contributing data, developing models, or deploying AI assets.
This unique design not only lowers the entry barrier to AI but also builds a more democratized and fair AI collaborative ecosystem, allowing every participant to share in the industry's growth dividends.
In short, Sahara AI is an AI public chain focused on 'AI development' and 'AI data/model assetization', allowing users to co-create infrastructure through data labeling and gain real value from day one.
2. Why is Sahara AI important?
Traditionally, opportunities to influence AI development have been limited to developers. However, with Sahara AI, anyone can participate and directly influence the AI ecosystem, helping to build a new generation of AI that is fairer and more user-centric.
With the advancement of AI technology, the complexity of its data requirements is also increasing. Tasks that once involved labeling objects or simple classifications have evolved into nuanced processes, such as sentiment annotation, multi-modal data alignment, and organizing domain-specific datasets. These tasks require careful thought, expertise, and precision to ensure high-quality results. The Sahara AI data service platform aims to tackle these challenges by leveraging a globally diverse and decentralized labeling machine. Users contribute knowledge, helping to lay the foundation for a more equitable and user-centered AI ecosystem while also being rewarded.
Developers can access trusted models and datasets through Sahara AI, annotate and optimize datasets to accelerate development speed and ensure high-quality data input.
3. Team Members.
The core team of Sahara AI consists of senior experts from the AI and Web3 industries, with past experiences including Stanford University, the University of Southern California, the University of California, Berkeley, AI2, Microsoft, Binance, Stability AI, Google, Protocol Labs, and Avalanche. The team members integrate their rich cross-disciplinary experience into the design and development of Sahara AI, laying a solid technical and strategic foundation for the platform.
The founding team includes:
Sean Ren (@xiangrenNLP): AI professor at the University of Southern California and chairman of the Viterbi Center, with a strong academic background and research experience in AI technology.
Tyler Zhou (@tz_sahara): Former investment director at Binance Labs, with deep understanding and insights into blockchain ecosystems and Web3 investments.
4. Partners.
Sahara AI has not only gained the support of institutional investors but also the backing and guidance of leading figures in the AI industry and academia, including Laksh Vaaman Sehgal, Vice Chairman of Motherson Group, Rohan Taori, a scientist from Anthropic, the organization behind the Claude large language model, Teknium co-founder from Nous Research, and Vipul Prakash, CEO of Together AI.
Elvis Zhang, founding member of Midjourney.
5. Financing Situation.
This year, Sahara AI secured 43 million dollars in funding led by Pantera Capital, Binance Labs, and Polychain Capital, including corporate strategic investments from Samsung and Thailand's Kasikorn Bank.
6. How to participate.
Sahara is currently issuing Sahara Points (SP) rewards to users for testnet tasks. The mainnet is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2025, providing ample time to accumulate points.
Step 1: Join the waiting list.
Season 1 is now live, and users who have obtained the whitelist can start tasks. Those without the whitelist can register immediately to apply for it.
https://hi.saharalabs.ai/get-started.
Step 2: Choose Tasks.
After getting on the whitelist, go to the platform https://app.saharalabs.ai.
Choose tasks that align with your interests and expertise, exploring various data tasks in the creator economy, gaming, science, trade, and more.
Step 3: Apply for Tasks.
Each task list provides a comprehensive overview, including a clear description of the work involved, the rewards offered, and the estimated difficulty level. Some tasks require participants to take a brief qualification exam based on specific tasks to confirm that data providers possess the relevant expertise, ensuring that all platform contributors deliver work that meets the highest standards. Each task's exam qualification is only available once, and failure to pass means no retake. This reflects the platform's high standard for data quality. It is evident that the Sahara team is genuinely focusing on data quality, rather than chasing trends or flooding the platform with ineffective data. Currently, over 35 technology innovation companies and research institutions are using Sahara AI, including Microsoft, Amazon, MIT, Motherson Group, and Snapchat.
Step 4: Contribute Knowledge.
Label, annotate, or review data. User contributions will directly improve the quality and reliability of datasets, helping to build smarter AI systems. For example, when I was working on the task regarding Defi Influencers, I filled in the Twitter handles, recommendations, and representative tweets of the influencers I thought were outstanding. If the influencers I recommended are the same as others, I will share the rewards with them. The platform incentivizes users to provide unique data in this way.
Step 5: Earn Sahara points and achievements.
You earn Sahara points for completing each task, and high-quality contributions can earn additional rewards. Points and achievements will be automatically calculated using the platform's advanced quality assurance mechanism.
Strategy:
Provide accurate, high-quality answers in tasks to earn base + reward points. Compete for a spot in the top 1,000 on the leaderboard by earning as many XP as possible, as these users will receive special benefits. Participants with multiple low-quality contributions will gradually be banned from participation to prevent affecting the contributions of other high-quality users. The minimum accuracy threshold for submitting tasks is 15%. If 4 out of the last 10 tasks are flagged, submission will be suspended for 7 days. If suspended 3 times within 3 months, the user will be permanently banned from submitting tasks.
By signing in for 31 consecutive days, you can earn an NFT to record your contribution after the first season ends.
6. Summary.
The value of AI data labeling lies in providing accurate training data, which is crucial for improving the accuracy and performance of AI models. Precise labeling helps models better understand and process information, resulting in superior performance in practical applications. This is at the core of Sahara AI. The project team states that with the continuous optimization of Sahara AI, more products for public participation will be launched in the future.
It can be seen that this is a project with real value and community-friendly characteristics, worthy of attention.