Blockchain Artificial Intelligence
Sahara AI: Leading Decentralized Network for AI
A permissionless, high performance blockchain designed for securely deploying personalized autonomous AI with privacy and provenance
Sahara AI is a decentralized AI network that aims to transform how knowledge is owned, shared, and monetized globally. It focuses on creating a high-performance, trustless, and privacy-preserving ecosystem for AI. Sahara AI’s mission is to reward AI trainers, data providers, and users for their contributions to AI development, addressing the current economic model of the AI industry where the proceeds from AI models are often directed towards the companies that created them.
One of Sahara’s notable products is the Sahara Knowledge Agent (KA), a customizable AI agent designed for individuals and businesses. The unique aspect of Sahara KA is its monetization model, where experts and companies that train the model can be directly compensated. This compensation is facilitated through blockchain networks, ensuring a privacy-preserving way to track data and reward contributors. Sahara KA is built using Sahara Data, which provides high-value data services for AI model training, addressing concerns about security and privacy in data handling.
Sahara AI has already seen adoption from notable institutions such as Microsoft, MIT, and USC, and has begun serving enterprise clients with its Sahara KA service. The startup, based in Los Angeles, was co-founded by Sean Ren, an AI researcher and tenured member of the computer science faculty at the University of Southern California (USC), and Tyler Zhou, who has experience in investment and technology. Sahara AI has raised $6 million in seed funding, led by Polygon Capital, with participation from Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, and Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of the Polygon blockchain ecosystem.
The company’s approach aims to address the growing concern of people losing their livelihoods to AI by incentivizing the users, data providers, and AI trainers that help AI tools develop. Sahara AI believes that this disruptive technology can come from the bottom up, offering a solution to the current economic model of the AI industry.