Asset manager Grayscale has launched a new crypto fund that provides investors with exposure to decentralized artificial intelligence protocols.
According to a July 17 announcement, Grayscale Decentralized AI Fund kicks off with a basket of tokens that include Bittensor (TAO), Filecoin (FIL), Livepeer (LPT), Near (NEAR), and Render (RNDR).
The fund is only available for accredited investors, which means it isn’t available to the general public.
The strategy for the new fund focuses on three primary categories of decentralized AI assets. It includes protocols building decentralized AI services, such as chatbots and image-generation services; solutions to centralized AI-related problems, including authenticity checks against bots, deep fakes, and misinformation; and protocols building AI infrastructure, such as decentralized marketplaces for data storage, GPU computation, 3D rendering, and streaming services.
As of July 16, TAO accounted for 2.92% of the basket’s assets, followed by FIL at 30.59%, LPT at 8.64%, NEAR at 32.99%, and RNDR at 24.86%.
Decentralized AI gains traction
An increasing number of Web3-based protocols are working on AI intersections. Sentient, for instance, raised $85 million in funding in June to develop an open-source AI platform. Another recently launched startup, Sahara, is developing a decentralized AI network that facilitates the creation of autonomous Knowledge Agents (KAs) for data analysis.
The SingularityNET ecosystem, one of the pioneers in AI decentralization, has recently announced a token merger with Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol to create the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI).
From Grayscale’s portfolio, Bittensor offers a marketplace where users can create, train and share AI models, earning rewards for contributing to the network. Pantera Capital backs the protocol. Meanwhile, Filecoin provides decentralized storage and distribution of large data sets required for AI training and deployment.
Livepeer, on the other hand, is a decentralized video streaming network built on the Ethereum blockchain. It uses AI algorithms to transcode videos into multiple formats, enhance quality, and perform video editing tasks using AI. Solana-based Render is a decentralized GPU network that can be used for AI tasks that require significant GPU resources, such as training deep learning models.