Nous Research Secures $50M for Decentralized AI Training on Solana Blockchain

Nous Research raises $50M for decentralized AI training led by Paradigm - SiliconANGLE

Nous Research raises $50M for decentralized AI training led by Paradigm Nous Research, a decentralized artificial intelligence startup, today said it has raised $50 million in an early-stage round almost entirely funded by the crypto-focused investment firm Paradigm. According to a report from Fortune, the Series A round follows seed rounds totaling $20 million from investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital. According to the report, the funding brings the crypto token valuation of the company to $1 billion. Novus uses the Solana blockchain network to enable distributed training for AI models by allowing users to commit idle compute from both consumer- and industrial-grade graphics processing units. The company seeks to disrupt the current paradigm of centralized AI development of giants such as DeepSeek and OpenAI by allowing numerous participants to join the network and commit resources. Although Nous did not start with the idea of adopting blockchain technology, it eventually sought it out because it can be incorporated to facilitate decentralized model training. It can also be used to reward participants for their unused GPU compute contributed to the system with blockchain-based cryptocurrency. "We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute less as a donation but more as a transaction," Nous cofounder Karan Malhotra told Fortune. Additionally, blockchain technology includes a mechanism for tracking transactions that allows the company to build decentralized training processes and produce complete, transparent historical audit trails of all data committed to a system. Nous hopes this capability will make it possible to detect and avoid data poisoning, also known as AI poisoning, a type of cyberattack where malicious actors manipulate or corrupt training data used to build machine learning models. The goal is to influence the outcome of the model's behavior and outputs leading to biased or harmful results by injecting false or misleading data, deleting data or altering labels. Malhotra added that there is a lot of skepticism currently about blockchain technology and cryptocurrency, especially regarding scams and hacking, noting that there is "a lot of room for grift." However, he said a lot of the research team is familiar with the crypto business and initially were not in favor of adding the blockchain element until a recent research breakthrough for decentralized training. "We don't want to get kind of bogged down by the traditional view of how crypto operates when we're a very serious research lab and an academic lab," Malhotra said. Nous recently released Psyche, named for the goddess of the soul from Greek mythology, a network on the Solana blockchain that allows for the fault-tolerant globally distributed training of AI models. The company said it ran a successful test run of a 15 billion parameter model in December 2024 by scaling the network through 11,000 steps. At the center of Psyche is a component that optimizes training called Nous Distro which lets each node train independently instead of coordinating at every step. The company said this greatly decreases the bandwidth needed to achieve comparable results to centralized training.

Nous Research secures $50M from Paradigm to build decentralized AI on Solana

Nous Research is building decentralized, open-source AI models using Solana and global computing power. Decentralized AI startup Nous Research has raised $50 million in a Series A round led by crypto venture giant Paradigm, marking one of the largest investments at the intersection of blockchain and artificial intelligence to date. According to an April 25 report from Fortune, the funding round values Nous at a $1 billion token valuation. Previous investors include Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital, who contributed to Nous's earlier $20 million seed rounds. Operating since 2022, Nous Research is stepping into the spotlight with the latest fundraising to develop open-source AI models powered by decentralized infrastructure. The company leverages the Solana blockchain to coordinate and incentivize global participation in training its AI models, aiming to challenge centralized giants like OpenAI and DeepSeek. Related: Angels from Citadel, Jane Street, JPMorgan back $20M raise for Theo network Founded by AI researchers, including collaborators like Diederik Kingma (co-inventor of the Adam optimizer), Nous is taking a different approach from typical crypto-AI projects. Instead of relying on centralized data centers, it enables individuals worldwide to contribute idle computing power for AI training. Blockchain technology underpins this model, ensuring secure, incentivized participation while mitigating risks like data poisoning through features such as Byzantine fault tolerance. "We very much came from a mentality that we want to create and serve the world's best AI," co-founder Karan Malhotra told Fortune. Per the report, the 20-person team at Nous Research will allocate much of the new capital toward scaling compute resources and advancing research. In December 2024, Nous told Venture Beat that it is pre-training a 15-billion-parameter LLM in a decentralized manner, livestreaming progress to showcase transparency and performance. Meanwhile, Paradigm's backing signals a deepening interest in AI within crypto venture circles. "This open, community-oriented approach is a powerful contrast to the closed, centralized efforts from incumbent labs," Paradigm partner Arjun Balaji reportedly told the outlet. Related: Crypto users cool with AI dabbling with their portfolios: Survey Paradigm is one of the biggest and most successful crypto venture capital firms. In March, Web3 data platform Kaito AI ranked Paradigm as the top-performing crypto VC over the past year, posting an impressive 11.80% performance metric, outperforming other major players like Alliance (10.64%), Dragonfly (8.32%), a16z (6.94%) and Multicoin Capital (5.86%). Founded by Coinbase's Fred Ehrsam and ex-Sequoia partner Matt Huang, Paradigm has built a strong reputation for spotting high-potential crypto projects early. Its portfolio includes leading DeFi platforms like Uniswap (UNI) and dYdX, as well as consistent backing for Ethereum scaling solutions such as Optimism. Paradigm also led a $255 million round for StarkNet, a key player in zero-knowledge rollup technology.