Decentralized AI project, Wynd Network, has successfully raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round led by Polychain Capital and Tribe Capital. Other participants in the funding round included Bitscale, Big Brain, Advisors Anonymous, Typhon V, and Mozaik. This comes after a pre-seed round led by No Limit Holdings in December 2022.
Wynd Network is the developer behind Grass, a decentralized web scraping network that focuses on creating decentralized AI models. Grass is a browser extension app that utilizes individuals’ unused internet bandwidth to scrape the web and rewards users with Grass Points. Wynd then sells the scraped datasets to companies, particularly AI developers, in need of web data.
The use of blockchain technology in AI development is gaining interest among investors. AI models often require massive amounts of online data, which is typically collected through web scraping. However, web scrapers often face issues such as websites blocking data center IP addresses or falsifying data to prevent scraping. Grass bypasses some of these roadblocks by using individuals’ browsers. Notably, Wynd does not have access to users’ data.
Users of the Grass extension can earn Grass Points by running the extension and referring other users. This has sparked speculation about the potential for a future token associated with the project. Wynd is also utilizing blockchain to verify the legitimacy of its scraped data, addressing concerns about potential biases introduced by off-chain models.
Chris Nguyen, the chief technology officer of Wynd Network, highlighted the cryptographic linking of data sets to the request as a way to ensure data legitimacy without putting excessive amounts of data on-chain. Nguyen emphasized that current blockchain capacities are insufficient to handle the massive data requirements of AI training.
Wynd is collaborating with two open source-focused AI companies and is exploring partnerships outside of the AI sector. The convergence of AI and crypto has generated excitement among market participants and investors. Other projects in this space, such as Ritual, have also attracted significant funding.
The positive sentiment towards crypto and AI from investors is driven by the performance of popular AI tokens like Render (RNDR) and Bittensor (TAO) and the anticipation of AI’s growing influence in the market. The integration of AI and crypto is seen as an attractive opportunity for startups, driving investor interest.