OpenGradient Raises $8.5M to Advance Decentralized AI Infrastructure

NEW YORK, Oct. 10, 2024 — OpenGradient, a leading decentralized AI infrastructure company, has raised $8.5M in seed funding. With a mission to accelerate open-source AI, OpenGradient democratizes model ownership, streamlines AI deployment, and enables universal access to AI.

OpenGradient’s end-to-end decentralized platform offers scalable AI compute on-chain, ensuring verifiability and attribution while enhancing security for AI deployment and hosting. Its multi-layer technology stack includes an EVM-compatible blockchain with its innovative heterogeneous AI compute architecture (HACA) and a proprietary library of feature-rich tools to support and scale secure AI workflows on-chain.

OpenGradient empowers developers to build and deploy optimized decentralized applications (dApps) with ease. OpenGradient’s web portal and SDK allow Web2 developers to leverage its AI stack without the complexities of blockchain while enjoying the security and composability benefits of a decentralized infrastructure.

“Developers today face significant hurdles when developing secure software for custom AI models, often grappling with developing a variety of complex cryptographic or hardware solutions into their stack,” said CEO and Co-Founder, Matthew Wang. “OpenGradient revolutionizes this approach, offering near-instantaneous model deployment and secure inference of AI models in mere seconds.”

The $8.5 million seed round included participation from a16z Crypto Startup Accelerator (a16z CSX), SV Angel, Coinbase Ventures, SALT Fund, Symbolic Capital, Foresight Ventures, and angel investors, including Balaji Srinivasan (ex-Coinbase CTO), Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Founder), Sandeep Nailwal (Polygon Founder), and more. OpenGradient is also currently participating in the Fall 2024 a16z CSX program in New York City.

About OpenGradient

Headquartered in New York City, OpenGradient is a leading decentralized platform unlocking scalable AI compute on-chain, empowering developers to build secure, intelligent, and optimized decentralized applications. We provide on-chain AI model hosting, permissionless composability, secure inference execution, and seamless access to accelerate open-source AI and foster next-gen applications.

Source: OpenGradient