SingularityNET, a Switzerland-based decentralized marketplace for AI, raised $36m in its public token sale.
In less than 60 seconds after opening the sale to the public, the company sold out the whole amount of available tokens (the AGI token).
Led by Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO, SingularityNET brings AI and blockchain together to create a decentralized open market for AIs and let anyone monetize AI, allowing companies, organizations, and developers to buy and sell AI at scale.
Read the entire press release below:
SingularityNET Raises $36 Million in 60 Seconds to Build Next Generation AI
Individual contribution from the crowd has been capped after receiving $361 million in demand
December 22, 2017 – SingularityNET, the decentralized marketplace for AI, today announced the results of its public token sale. In less than 60 seconds after opening the sale to the public, SingularityNET sold out the whole amount of available tokens (the AGI token), bringing the total collection to $36 million USD.
“Today’s results are powerful evidence that SingularityNET is an idea whose time has come,” said Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO of SingularityNET. “In discussing the SingularityNET project all around the world, I’ve found that it resonates remarkably with people from all walks of life, and the enthusiasm we’ve seen in our community is awe-inspiring.”
SingularityNET brings AI and blockchain together to create a decentralized open market for AIs. Powering the decentralized AI economy, SingularityNET lets anyone monetize AI, allowing companies, organizations, and developers to buy and sell AI at scale, thus lowering costs and increasing output.
Enabling tailored AI-as-a-service on a permissionless platform, SingularityNET lets anyone use AI services easily, and aims to become the key open-source protocol for networking AI on the internet. A long term goal is to form a coordinated Artificial General Intelligence within the market network. Bringing widespread transparency to AI through blockchain technology, SingularityNET’s global commons infrastructure could remove the control of AI from large, centralized institutions. As the first and only platform for coordinating global AI resources at scale, SingularityNET brings the life-changing power of AI to everyone.
SingularityNET received enormous interest in the sale of the AGI token, receiving $361 million in whitelist demand from more than 20,000 registrants, after setting a hard cap of $36 million.
SingularityNET has carefully screened all applicants using layers of algorithms, in addition to manual review, to comply with global KYC/AML regulations. This reduced the pool of contributors to 5,000, but also set a new standard for fundraising via blockchain with respect to global legislation.
“While we are extremely honored by the support of our rapidly growing community, we believe it was responsible not to over-capitalize the project, while guaranteeing everybody the opportunity to participate,” said co-founder Simone Giacomelli. “We believe this decision sets in practice a good example for all token sales going forward, and will be healthy for the decentralized and blockchain community over the long run.”
“We will invite developers from around the world to insert their AI code into the SingularityNET, to monetize their work and to contribute to the emerging AGI global brain. We will invite users of AI-as-a-service to choose SingularityNET as an alternative to big, corporate AI. This is the start of the decentralized AGI revolution!” concluded Goertzel.