Sentient launches The GRID to connect and make money from open AI agents – News

Open-source artificial intelligence development platform provider Sentient Foundation today announced the launch of The GRID, a “network of intelligence” that is designed to let developers monetize and coordinate artificial intelligence agents across real-world environments.

The GRID varies from proprietary marketplaces from the likes of OpenAI and Amazon Web Services Inc. by being developer-led, open to all and designed to let builders monetize and orchestrate intelligent agents across open, real-world environments.

At launch, The GRID features more than 40 specialized agents, 50 data sources and more than 10 models. The agents include generative graphics engine Napkin and fast-growing search startup Exa Inc., as well as ecosystem agents deployed across multiple blockchains, such as Base, BNB, Polygon, Arbitrum, Celo and Near.

The GRID also lays the foundation for composability between agents, which Sentience says allows for multiple requests to be routed via numerous AI agents.

The agents and data sources are accessible through Sentient Chat, a consumer interface that allows users to discover, invoke and compose agents and data sources into task workflows. The agents on The GRID can perform real tasks, not just wrap prompts, whether coordinating calendar actions, generating code visualizing wallet data, or synthesizing search results.

“The GRID is the world’s largest collection of open-source intelligence and the economic rails that allow it to scale,” said Sentient co-founder Himanshu Tyagi. “This isn’t just a better app store for AI; it’s about providing the foundational infrastructure to make open-source AI viable for the long-term.”

The new service offers developers full transparency, monetization pathways and distribution. Builders can plug in their own agents, models, or tools and earn token-based rewards as users stake against their favorite agents, data sources, training libraries and models and interact with them in real time.

For developers, The GRID offers more than just agent distribution by also supporting a growing ecosystem of open AI “artifacts,” including models, datasets, compute resources and tooling, that can all be integrated, composed and monetized.

The GRID also benefits users, who gain access to a diverse ecosystem of AI agents with clear provenance and the ability to customize, compose, or swap components. Sentient’s staking mechanism introduces a feedback loop: the more conviction users have in a given agent, the more that agent is funded and surfaced, democratizing both innovation and economic upside.

Sentient has pioneered a suite of open-source technologies to fuel its ecosystem, including Dobby, the world’s first loyal AI model aligned with community values like personal freedom and pro-crypto principles; Open Deep Search and Recursive Open Meta-Agent, frameworks that decisively outperform other proprietary models on reasoning and search benchmarks; Sentient Chat, a user-friendly interface for agent discovery and composition; advanced fingerprinting techniques for model ownership and security; and a scalable model training pipeline that enables decentralized, community-driven AI development.

“Closed labs are racing to lock down AGI for themselves,” added Tyagi. “The GRID flips that model. It ensures intelligence is built in the open, distributed globally, and governed by the communities who rely on it.”

Sentient Foundation is a venture capital-backed startup that has raised one round of $85 million in July 2024. Investors include Founders Fund Management, Pantera Capital Management LP, Framework Ventures, Ethereal Ventures, Robot Ventures, Symbolic Capital Partners, Delphi Ventures, Hack VC, Arrington Capital, HashKey Capital, Canonical Crypto and Foresight Ventures.

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