Thank You to the Sahara Community
Sahara's first week out of stealth saw an outpouring of creativity from our community, plus articles in Coindesk, and blogs from our investors.
On March 5, 2024, we came out of stealth mode and announced our mission to the world. We’re incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support and excitement. So far, more than 50,000 of you have joined our waitlist within just five days and many more are following us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Discord.
A Big Thank You to Our Seed Round Investors
Coming out of stealth meant that we could reveal details of our seed round, which was led by Polychain Capital. A total of $6mm was raised, with participation from Samsung Next, Matrix Partners, Motherson Group, dao5, Geekcartel, Canonical Crypto, Nomad Capital, Dispersion Capital, Alumni Ventures, Tangent Ventures, and Coho Deeptech.
Samsung Next Investor Diane Choi had a nice write-up explaining why they invested in Sahara:
She discusses the broader context in which AI is operating, focusing first on the “black box” phenomenon, referring to the opacity that plagues many major generative AI and other data science products. This lack of transparency complicates regulatory efforts, and understanding of AI innovation, and feeds into a narrative of centralization, deterring data owners from contributing their data due to privacy concerns.
Sahara’s decentralized AI network changes this dynamic and enables individuals and businesses to monetize their proprietary knowledge through personalized AI agents (Knowledge Agents), keeping their data secure in the process. This is part of a broader effort to foster trust, ethical use, and widespread adoption of AI technologies. Choi touches on Sahara's data infrastructure service, Sahara Data, offering data annotation and other AI model training services. Sahara Data has already attracted significant interest from over 30 enterprise clients, including Fortune 500 companies and unicorn startups.
Sahara Founders Interviewed by Coindesk’s Sam Kessler
During an exchange with Sam Kressler from Coindesk, our co-founders, Sean Ren and Tyler Zhou introduced the groundbreaking Sahara network, an ecosystem where individuals and businesses could be compensated for their valuable data, knowledge, and AI expertise. This basic exchange is the fundamental mechanic at work in Sahara’s Collaborative Economy – a model where knowledge developers, knowledge providers, compute providers, execution node operators, validators, knowledge consumers, and many more to come are directly rewarded for their contributions. This represents a significant departure from the standard Web 2.0 model, which relies on providing free services in exchange for unfettered access to personal data.
Coindesk is the preeminent blockchain publication, so naturally, they were curious about how Sahara would use web3 technology. Sean and Tyler discussed how the AI network would use blockchain technology to keep consumer data secure and private while allowing transparent tracking of data contributions and rewards. Also of interest was our forthcoming product, Sahara Knowledge Agents, which will provide customers (first businesses and later individuals) with personalized AI that can autonomously operate in the world.
Memes and other Delights from our Discord Server
There has been an outpouring of creativity in our Discord! Come have a look at the memes being created, stay for an engaging conversation with a fast-growing international community, and take in a feed of the latest details and updates from our team.
Take the Next Step
For information about how you can collaborate with us or contribute to the project, please consider joining our Discord, following us on Twitter, or signing up for our waitlist.