Despite the tech industry’s focus shifting to artificial intelligencecompanies working on machine learning are still working to maximize the benefits of distributed technology. UK-based Gensyn AI announced on Sunday a $43 million Series A funding round led by a16z crypto, aiming to enable developers to create AI tools on a pay-as-you-go model. there is
Gensyn was founded in 2020 by Ben Fielding and Harry Grieve.
“At its core, Gensyn is a distributed machine learning computing protocol,” said Gensyn AI co-founder Ben Fielding. Decrypt.
According to Fielding, the idea is to connect all machine learning-enabled computing hardware in the world, including GPUs and CPUs, that can perform machine learning training work, making it accessible to engineers, researchers and academics. That’s it.
The biggest problem, Fielding said, is verifying whether the computational tasks performed on the device have been performed properly.
“That’s the big secret sauce behind Gensyn. We’ve solved that problem specifically when it comes to machine learning training,” Fielding said.
According to Grieve, Gensyn is a layer 1 proof-of-stake blockchain based on the Substripe protocol. Layer 1 blockchain refers to a blockchain network that: Bitcoin and of Ethereum Basic protocol or underlying layer. Transactions occur at this layer and blocks are added to the chain.
“The advantage of Gensyn is unlimited scale and ultra-low cost in terms of verification overhead,” said Grieve.
Other companies participating in a16z’s funding round include CoinFund, Canonical Crypto, Protocol Labs, Eden Block and several angel investors.
“We share Harry and Ben’s belief in democratizing AI and ensuring that the potential massive productivity gains are available to talented entrepreneurs who want to train new models at scale. and we are delighted to work with them on such an important endeavor,” said Ali Yahya, a16z crypto general partner, in a statement.
Although the term AI has now become an industry buzzword due to the rapid development of AI since the launch of ChatGPT in November, Grieve said Gensyn AI is first and foremost a machine learning company. rice field.
“We have a background in machine learning and deep learning, so when we tackled it, we didn’t approach it like we were working with cryptocurrencies,” said Grieve. “How can we make this relevant?”
“Rather, it seemed to have a very serious machine learning problem that required a decentralized layer of trust,” he added.
Grieve said the money will be used to expand the Gensyn AI team and cover production costs, including the launch of a test network later this year.
“Recent advances in AI are amazing and have the power to save the world, but the enormous computational power required gives big tech companies an edge over start-ups in the race to capture the value of AI. ,” Yahya reportedly said in a blog post accompanying the magazine. Funding announcement. “[We] We look forward to partnering with them to make AI infrastructure more widely available. “
Gensyn is just the latest artificial intelligence investment by the venture capital giant. In March, a16z announced investment in chatbot developer Character AI VC general partner Sarah Wang has joined the startup’s board of directors.
“This raise is a change of starting point for us to solve a research problem and know what we need to build to make this happen,” Fielding said. “But we realized that what we needed to build was massive and required a lot of resources. It helps us build something meaningful.”
