Decentralized AI is coming to Solana, as Paradigm invests $50 million in Nous

Decentralized AI startup Nous Research has secured a $50 million investment from venture capital firm Paradigm.

Blockchain firms have historically struggled to compete in the AI space, but that may soon change. On Friday, April 25, venture capital firm Paradigm announced a $50 million investment in an AI startup, Nous Research. The company will use the funds to build a decentralized AI model on Solana (SOL).

The project plans to train its own open-source large language models, serving as an alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Meta’s Llama. While the models are still in the testing phase, Nous Research has already published several influential research papers, including one on training LLMs with GPUs that are not located in the same place.

Nous Research team is ‘crypto native,’ cofounder says

Nous Research aims to leverage the Solana blockchain to run the decentralized computing network needed to train its LLMs. Instead of relying on a single data center, the platform will allow anyone to contribute their idle GPU power to help train the models. In return, contributors will earn tokens as a reward.

“We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute less as a donation but more as a transaction,” said Nous Research co-founder Karan Malhotra.

Malhotra acknowledged the widespread skepticism around AI and crypto. In particular, he noted that many crypto projects are driven by hype and said there is “a lot of room for grift.” However, he emphasized that their research supports blockchain’s real use case in decentralized training.

The Series A round puts Nous Research’s valuation at $1 billion, financed almost exclusively by Paradigm. The company had previously raised $20 million from investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital.