The project Sahara raised $43 million in two rounds of financing:
In March 2024, raised $6 million from Polychain, Sequoia Capital, SamsungNext, etc.2 products are planned:
An analogue of a freelance exchange where tasks on various topics are posted. For their completion, Sahara points are awarded.
Currently in development, no details.
Team
CEO Sean Ren
- Has 2 developer degrees;
- According to information from LinkedIn, he simultaneously works as a professor at the University of Southern California and as a director at INK Labs (the company is associated with the study of new methods for AI)
- Representatives of Pantera Capital, Coinbase, IOSG VC, Paradigm. Apparently, he is not the last person in the cryptosphere.
- Twitter - https://x.com/xiangrennlp?lang=en
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/xren7
COO Tyler Zhou
- Graduated from Berkeley University in the USA as an economist and business administrator.
- After that, he worked in various investment companies and became an investment director at Binance from 2022 to 2023.< /li>
- Almost does not appear on cameras.
- Twitter - https://x.com/tz_sahara
- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tylerzhou/
According to information from LinkedIn the company has more than 50 employees and 9 open vacancies.
The project often appears at the latest crypto conferences and summits (Super AI, Dubai 2024, Token 2049, Open AGI Summit), mainly by CEO Sean Ren.
The CEO also had a podcast with Pantera Capital with Bittensor founders Jacob Steeves and Ilya Polosukhin from Near, in which they discussed the development of AI and Web 3.0 technologies.
Competitors and evaluation
There are many AI projects, but they all perform different tasks. The functionality of the AI marketplace is similar to the Render Network product, but Sahara is focused on a wide range of industries, not just rendering.
Render Token (RNDR) is a peer-to-peer network that seeks to transform the power of graphics processing units (GPUs) into a decentralized economy of interconnected 3D assets. Funds include Multicoin Capital and Solana Ventures. The amount of fees is similar - $47 million.
The project is well established. Trading at a valuation of $2.45 billion. Circulate is excellent.
Considering Binance among investors and the AI narrative, in a positive scenario, Sahara could easily be worth more than $1 billion. We are waiting for tokenomics.
Main activities
Until August 4, there was a campaign on Galxe (you had to subscribe to social networks), participated ~ 230k users.
At the moment, it is possible to sign up for the whitelist for the AI marketplace:
- Go to site
- Click Join Waitlist
- Fill in the data
May 30 sent 25 to users an invitation to test the platform, in which they can already earn points and write feedback. It is also advisable to join discord, there are roles for testers, you can be active, they might notice.
Conclusion
A fresh project with a promising AI narrative. Has every chance of success.
The team demonstrates dynamic development: actively participates in crypto conferences, speaks on podcasts with famous personalities, has close ties with Binance and cooperates with tier-1 funds.
