OpenGradient, a NYC-based decentralized AI infrastructure company, raised $8.5M in Seed funding.
The round was led by 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.
The company intends to use the funds to continue building out the decentralized infrastructure, deploying solutions and tools for AI and Web3 developers, and advancing applied ML research to grow the open-source AI ecosystem on blockchain.
Led by CEO Matthew Wang, OpenGradient provides an end-to-end decentralized platform that 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. Its web portal and SDK allow Web2 developers to leverage its AI stack without the complexities of blockchain while enjoying security and the composability benefits of a decentralized infrastructure.
The testnet is expected to be available to developers in Q4 2024.