Sentient
Category: AI Infrastructure
An open-source, community-owned Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) platform that democratizes AI development through decentralized, transparent frameworks with cryptographic usage tracking and fair monetization for model creators. Sentient was founded in 2024. The company is led by Sandeep Nailwal. Based in San Francisco, California, United States. Team size: 11-50. Total funding raised: $92.6M. Latest round: Strategic Investment. Key investors include Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Franklin Templeton.
- Founded
- 2024
- Headquarters
- San Francisco, California, United States
- Team size
- 11-50
- Total funding
- $92.6M
Value proposition
Democratizes AGI development by creating community-owned, open-source AI that prevents centralized control while enabling transparent, monetizable, and loyal AI models with fair value distribution for creators through the OML (Open, Monetizable, Loyal) paradigm.
Products and solutions
EvoSkill - Open-source framework that automatically evolves coding-agent skills from failure traces (+12.1% SealQA, SOTA OfficeQA), ROMA (Recursive Open Meta-Agent) - Hierarchical multi-agent AI framework for complex task execution, OML (Open, Monetizable, Loyal) - Cryptographic AI model distribution format with usage tracking, ODS (Open Deep Search) - Search-augmented reasoning framework using open-source models, Arena - Live AI agent stress-testing/competition platform ($50K+ prizes, 1,200+ applicants), Sentient Chat - UI gateway to the GRID intelligence network, Dobby - Open-source Loyal AI model family, GRID - Decentralized intelligence network (70+ partners), SENT Token - Coordination layer for incentive systems, Eldros - Agent evaluation/benchmark platform (coming soon 2026)
Unique value
Pioneers the OML (Open, Monetizable, Loyal) paradigm that solves fundamental issues in centralized AI: unclear model ownership, untraceable usage, and unfair value distribution. ROMA framework outperforms closed-source platforms (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini) on deep research benchmarks (Seal-0, FRAMES). First to combine blockchain-based cryptographic attribution with open-source AI model distribution.
Target customer
AI researchers and developers, enterprise organizations deploying AI agents, open-source AI community, academic institutions, blockchain/Web3 developers seeking transparent AI solutions
Industries served
Artificial Intelligence & AGI Development, Enterprise Software & AI Agents, Blockchain & Web3 Infrastructure, Academic Research & AI Safety, Decentralized AI Infrastructure
Technology advantage
Combines three key innovations: (1) OML cryptographic format enabling models to be freely distributed while maintaining usage authorization and monetization, (2) ROMA's hierarchical multi-agent architecture with structured reasoning achieving SOTA performance on research tasks, and (3) blockchain-based protocol for aligning incentives in open-source AGI development. Built on Polygon AggLayer for scalability with decentralized governance.
How they differentiate
Pioneers the OML (Open, Monetizable, Loyal) paradigm with cryptographic usage tracking and fair monetization; ROMA multi-agent framework achieves SOTA on deep research benchmarks (81.7% FRAMES). Delivers decentralized, community-owned AGI vs. closed platforms.
Main competitors
Talus, Olas, Theoriq, OpenAI, AWS
Key partnerships
Academic: Princeton University (Prof. Pramod Viswanath), Indian Institute of Science (Prof. Himanshu Tyagi), University of Washington (Prof. Sewoong Oh), Investors: Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), Pantera Capital, Framework Ventures, Franklin Templeton (strategic Jan 2026), Arrington Capital, plus 14+ additional VC firms, Infrastructure: Polygon Foundation (AggLayer); Fireworks AI (EvoSkill/Arena inference), Grant ecosystem partners (Jun 2026): Alibaba Cloud, Franklin Templeton, Princeton, IISc, Research Community: alphaXiv; ICML/NeurIPS/COLM peer-reviewed venues, Regional: Asia expansion (Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul); Open AGI Summit/Builders Day, Enterprise: Arena sponsors/participants including Founders Fund, Pantera, Franklin Templeton, Daytona, OpenRouter
Notable customers
Pantera Capital, Franklin Templeton
Major milestones
$85M seed round co-led by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, and Framework Ventures (July 2024), ROMA Search 81.7% accuracy on FRAMES benchmark (2025), Four research papers accepted to NeurIPS 2025, SENT TGE Nov 2025; Binance Wallet IEO $7.6M and spot listing Jan 2026, Arena platform launch (Feb 2026); Cohort 0 and OfficeQA Public Challenge winners announced (Apr/Jul 2026), EvoSkill V1 open-source release (Apr 2026), ICML 2026 paper accepted: The Scaffold Effect in Coding Agents; Open AGI Builders Day Seoul (Jul 2026), Sentient Foundation commits $42M Open Source AGI Grant and Investment Program (Jun 24 2026)
Growth metrics
Over 2 million users reached within months of launch
Market positioning
Decentralized alternative to closed AI (OpenAI, AWS) and multi-agent platforms (Talus, Olas, Theoriq), focusing on open-source AGI with transparent attribution and incentive-aligned governance.
Geographic focus
Global; East Asia expansion (Shanghai, Beijing, Seoul) via TinTinLand partnership; Singapore-based Foundation launch; university engagements across US, India, China.
Patents and IP
No specific patents publicly disclosed as of latest update. Maintains a global IP portfolio including patents, trademarks, and trade secrets. Core innovations are published as open-source frameworks and academic papers (OML whitepaper on IACR ePrint, arXiv).
About Sandeep Nailwal
Co-founder of Polygon (2017-present), one of the world's largest Ethereum scaling blockchain platforms. Currently serves as CEO of Polygon Foundation (as of June 2025). Previous roles include Co-founder and CEO of ScopeWeaver (2015-2017), Head of Technology and Supply Chain at Welspun Group's e-commerce division (2015-2016), Consultant at Deloitte (2014-2015), and Software Developer at Computer Sciences Corporation (2010-2012). Educational background: BTech from Maharaja Agrasen Institute of Technology (2006-2010) and MBA from National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai (2012-2014). Named to The Economic Times 40 Under 40 list in 2025.
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Official website: https://sentient.foundation