Founded by a Harvard-educated technology specialist and backed by $7.2 million in seed funding from a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) program and other prominent VCs, including Delphi Digital and Amber Group, Ambient is building AI solutions backed by proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain.
Backed by $7.2 million funding, Ambient introduces AI to proof-of-work (PoW) blockchain scene
According to the statement by its team, Ambient, a blockchain that merges Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) functionality with proof-of-work (PoW) consensus, is nearing major AI development announcements. The project is empowering open-source AI applications with the decentralized power of proof-of-work networks.
Ambient tackles major issues in closed-source AI — including bias, limited privacy, censorship and model "bait-and-switches" — while offering the robust performance and accessibility that has attracted over 400 million weekly users to models like ChatGPT.
Its proof-of-work (PoW) platform enables verified inference on a 600+ billion parameter model with minimal overhead and unparalleled security, rewarding miners with predictable, Bitcoin-like incentives beyond the modest transaction fees typical in proof-of-stake (PoS) systems.
Ambient cofounder Travis Good, PhD, is excited by the innovative design of his platform and the benefits it brings to developers and investors:
Ambient directly aligns the economics of its network with the generation of useful output to create a focused competitor for closed-source AI unlike anything the market has ever seen. This raise marks a pivotal moment in our journey toward facilitating a future where AGI is ubiquitous and community-controlled. We’re proud to have experienced and capable investors like a16z CSX, Delphi, and Amber Group helping us every step of the way.
Ambient leverages the proof-of-work mechanism to deliver the fastest and cheapest verified AI inference, with a long-term vision of training an on-chain AGI-level AI foundation model — making post-human intelligence an omnipresent public good. Backed by $7.2 million funding in a16z’s Crypto Startup Accelerator (CSX) program, Ambient reflects the belief that post-human intelligence should be a public good.
Ambient to launch testnet by end of 2025
The platform’s architecture cuts verified inference overhead to 0.1% and reduces training costs by 10x compared to existing solutions.
Ambient is the first system to consolidate the learning of high-performance blockchains like Solana with the security guarantees of PoW, resulting in a state-of-the-art approach that uniquely meets both the performance and security demands of AI systems.
By combining a trustless design, unprecedented computation capacity and carefully aligned economic incentives, the platform aims to transform how AI services are delivered and accessed, and to power the approaching agentic economy in a decentralized manner. Ambient’s testnet is expected to launch later this year.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin