Is a new David emerging on the AI battlefields to challenge the tech Goliaths? Founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs Nik Havryliak and Dmytro Dimenko and based in Cambridge, UK, Assisterr.ai has just raised $1.7 million to develop its “network of community-owned SLMs [Small Language Models].”
The startup views AI as “a global threat” if it falls “into the hands of a few monopolists backed by Big Tech companies or governments.”
The core issue lies in data ownership, according to Assisterr. “Big Tech players simply took the knowledge that belongs to all humanity, trained their Large Language Models (LLMs), and then offered us a $20/month subscription.”
In response, the startup aims “to ensure everyone has equal opportunities to contribute to and benefit from AI progress,” and gets “a piece of the value their data creates.”
Assisterr is building an incentive-driven platform that “supports decentralized AI data inference and a network of community-owned SLMs.”
This infrastructure “allows everyone to contribute knowledge and expertise to train these AI models, ensuring permissionless access, data quality, and fair rewards,” states the startup.
Assisterr claims to have attracted 150,000 registered users to its platform since its launch in late 2022. It has developed “more than 60 SLMs curated for leading Web3 protocols such as Solana, Optimism, 0g.ai, and NEAR.”
Despite its anti-Big Tech stance, Assisterr has been selected to participate in Google’s AI Startups program. The digital giant has given as much as $350,000 in funding to support Assisterr’s GPU, CPU, and cloud infrastructure needs.
The startup’s latest funding round included investments from Web3 venture funds such as Web3.com Ventures, Moonhill Capital, Contango, Outlier Ventures, Decasonic, Zephyrus Capital, Wise3 Ventures, Saxon, GFI Ventures, X Ventures, Koyamaki, Lucid Drakes Ventures, as well as notable industry figures as individual investors.
