The convergence of artificial intelligence and blockchain technology is gaining significant traction, highlighted by a major $50 million investment from venture capital heavyweight Paradigm into Nous Research.
This substantial funding injection, announced on April 25, empowers the AI startup to develop a decentralized AI model leveraging the capabilities of the Solana blockchain. Nous Research is positioning itself to carve out a niche in a field currently dominated by tech giants.
The project aims to construct its own open-source large language models (LLMs), presenting a potential alternative to established platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama. While still in development, Nous Research has already contributed significantly to the field, publishing research on novel training methods, such as utilizing geographically dispersed GPUs for LLM training.
[Preliminary report: https://t.co/b1XgJylsnV Nous Research is proud to release a preliminary report on DisTrO (Distributed Training Over-the-Internet) a family of… pic.twitter.com/h2gQJ4m7lB]
Nous Research intends to harness the Solana network to manage the distributed computing power essential for training its complex AI models. This innovative approach moves away from reliance on centralized data centers.
Instead, the platform plans to incentivize individuals globally to contribute their unused GPU resources towards training the AI. Participants in this distributed network will be rewarded with crypto tokens for their computing contributions.
“We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute less as a donation but more as a transaction,” explained Karan Malhotra, co-founder of Nous Research, emphasizing the transactional nature of the model.
Malhotra addressed the common skepticism surrounding crypto and AI ventures, acknowledging that hype often overshadows substance and potential for misuse exists. However, he asserted that Nous Research’s work demonstrates a genuine use case for blockchain in facilitating decentralized AI training.
This Series A funding round, predominantly financed by Paradigm, elevates Nous Research’s valuation to an impressive $1 billion. The startup had previously secured $20 million in funding from investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital.