Sentient’s open-source AI outperforms Perplexity, targets web3 devs

Sentient, backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, has announced Open Deep Search, an open-source AI framework that outperforms Perplexity in reasoning and search capabilities. The launch aims to democratize access to advanced artificiall intelligence and fuel web3 innovation through Sentient Chat, which already boasts a 1.75 million waitlist. San Francisco-based decentralized artificial intelligence developer Sentient unveiled its upcoming release of Open Deep Search on April 2. According to a press release shared with crypto.news, ODS is the first open-source AI search system to surpass Perplexity and Perplexity Sonar Reasoning Pro in performance benchmarks, including FRAMES and SimpleQA. The technology was first introduced to over 1,500 crypto and AI developers at the Open AGI Summit during ETH Denver. Sentient’s platform offers enhanced multi-step reasoning and factual query response capabilities, positioning ODS as a potential disruptor in the AI search sector. Sentient Labs, the developer behind ODS, was founded by former Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal. The platform raised $85 million in seed funding led by Pantera Capital and Framework Ventures, alongside Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund. “The release of Open Deep Search is a milestone in our mission to make AI accessible to everyone,” said Himanshu Tyagi, co-founder of Sentient. “Open-sourcing a framework that outperforms industry leaders like Perplexity throws down the gauntlet to closed-source AI developers while giving developers access to a powerful primitive that frees them to create the applications they’ve always dreamed of.” Scaling access through Sentient Chat Open Deep Search will be integrated into Sentient Chat, the company’s consumer-facing AI chatbot. The rollout will begin with early testers, followed by weekly feature updates ahead of a full public launch within the next two months. Despite limited funding compared to major AI players, Sentient developed ODS using decentralized principles and a lean budget. The company says this levels the playing field against centralized AI models backed by billions in funding. “ODS proves that open-source AI can compete with closed-source technology for reasoning architecture and search level,” the company stated in its release.