🚀🎉 Big news for all you BTC enthusiasts out there! A star-studded line-up of investors, including Ethereal, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital, Delphi, Dao5, Nomad, and Primitive Ventures, have joined forces with Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund to co-lead an $85M investment round in Sentient. 🤑💰

Sentient is an exciting platform that's on a mission to build open-source AI models. One of the main contributors is Sandeep Nailwal, the founder of Polygon. He believes that the rapid advancement of AI has the potential to transform every aspect of our lives, but the concentration of power in the hands of a few centralized entities poses significant risks. By building an open platform for AGI development, they aim to ensure that the benefits of AI are distributed equitably. 🌐💡

The platform has attracted the attention of some big names in the academic world, including Pramod Viswanath, a professor of engineering at Princeton University, and Himanshu Tyagi, an engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Science. Both have expressed their desire to compete directly with OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT and Sora. 🎓🔬

According to a press release, the testnet of Sentient is slated for Q3 this year, and the funds from this round will be used to accelerate the development of its AI platform. So, keep your eyes peeled for more updates on this exciting project! 👀🚀