Project introduction:
The AI industry is booming. Living in the Bay Area, we have witnessed the excitement and vitality brought by the construction in the AI field. Many friends, including excellent engineers and scientists, have quit their full-time jobs to start AI projects. In terms of infrastructure, there have already been some successful projects providing new and necessary services, such as vector databases, evaluation services, and model routing services. However, in terms of applications, despite much hype, many well-funded projects still struggle to find market fit and widespread adoption. The core issue is that AI applications require contextual data to provide useful reasoning services, and without this data, it is nearly impossible to offer services more useful than the latest version of ChatGPT.
PIN AI is an innovative project aimed at combining artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain technology, with the core goal of creating the world’s first open-source personal intelligent network (PIN). PIN AI promotes the shift of AI from centralized service models to decentralized service models through an open network and privacy protection, providing users with a more personalized AI experience while ensuring data security and ownership.
The vision of PIN AI is to build an open ecosystem that supports personal AI to provide practical AI services to users, such as shopping, travel planning, financial management, etc., through access to extensive contextual data.
Financing situation:
PIN AI recently completed a $10 million pre-seed round of financing, with participants including renowned investment institutions and angel investors such as a16z CSX, Hack VC, and Blockchain Builders Fund.
Team background:
PIN AI is led by three co-founders whose team possesses strong technical strength and industry experience, particularly in the fields of AI and blockchain. The founding team has a deep understanding of market dynamics and technological trends, laying a solid foundation for the project's innovation.
Davide Crapis - Co-founder
Background in blockchain protocol design, with some background in AI.
Previously served as a senior data scientist at Lyft, designing and implementing incentive distribution algorithms that granted xx dollars in growth incentives to passengers and drivers annually. After resigning, he spent some time as an independent researcher, studying incentive schemes and token distribution. Before founding PIN AI, he worked as a research scientist for the 'Robust Incentives' direction at the Ethereum Foundation.
Developed a machine learning model for 'consumer sensitivity to interest rates of investment/credit products' and served as a researcher and mentor in machine learning at Columbia Business School for four years. Joined the Web2 developer community 'South Park' to explore the intersection of large language models and blockchain.
Ben Wu - Co-founder
Background in operations, potentially providing strategic direction and AI product ideas.
Graduated from MIT, Y Combinator alumni. Before founding PIN AI, he served as the director of databases and operations at Yahoo's Strategic Data Solutions department, responsible for the operation and management of large-scale data projects.
Bill Sun - Co-founder, Chief Scientist
Background in quantitative trading and AI.
PhD in Mathematics from Stanford University, previously conducted AI research at Google DeepMind. Worked as an artificial intelligence/quantitative trading equity investment manager at a Wall Street asset management company. Founded the AI research organization AI+Club and created the AI technology community AGI House. An angel investor for the a16z scout fund. He is also the founder of Generative Alpha, focusing on enterprise-level AI solutions.
Future development potential and challenges
By combining blockchain and AI technology, PIN AI fills the current gaps in functionality and privacy of centralized AI. It provides developers with an open and innovative ecosystem, encouraging more Web2 services to transition to Web3 agency services, forming a wide range of application scenarios. Data privacy and security issues still need further optimization to meet more regulatory requirements. Building and engaging the user and developer community is crucial to the platform's success. Competing with large tech companies presents challenges in resource allocation for open-source innovation.
Through the innovative architecture of the personal intelligent network, PIN AI is expected to lead a transformation in the fields of AI personalization and data privacy protection. With strong financing support, technical advantages, and an open economic model, the project has immense development potential. However, how to promote community participation and ensure user privacy is key to future success. With the launch of the testnet, PIN AI will further validate its practicality and market fit, warranting continued attention.
Binance investment's star-level project -- PIN -- AI currently still has a small remaining balance.