The blockchain and AI startup Sahara AI announced on Wednesday that it has raised $43 million in a funding round led by venture capitalists Polychain Capital, Binance Labs, and Pantera Capital. Along with early-stage investor Matrix Partners, startup fund Geekcartel, and cryptocurrency investment fund Dao5, the series A round also attracted investments from Samsung NEXT. Unlike the existing paradigm, which usually rewards the firm that invented it, Sahara AI wants to use its decentralized blockchain platform to reward the users, data providers, and AI trainers that are essential to the success of generative AI. The money will be used by the company to increase its developer ecosystem, improve platform performance, and add more employees worldwide.
Since its establishment in April 2023, Sahara AI has worked with a number of well-known tech companies, such as Snap (SNAP.N), Amazon (AMZN.O), Microsoft (MSFT.O), and others. Generative AI uses data as its building block to create creations that resemble humans, but the rapidly expanding field has come under fire due to worries about copyright, privacy, and fair data usage.
