OpenMind Raises $20M to Advance FABRIC’s Decentralized AI System

OpenMind Secures $20M to Boost FABRIC’s Decentralized AI System

OpenMind, a robotics and AI startup, has raised $20 million in funding to advance its decentralized operating system, FABRIC. Pantera Capital led the investment round, with notable participation from Coinbase Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and Ribbit. 

The funding aims to accelerate development of OpenMinds open-source system, which is designed to support secure communication and collaboration among AI-powered machines.

FABRIC Enables Intelligent Machine Coordination

FABRIC is a hardware-agnostic platform built to facilitate communication between autonomous machine, regardless of their manufacturers. Using blockchain as a trust layer, FABRIC records and verifies interactions, ensuring transparency and security in multi-machine environments. 

The system enables robots to share identity, context, and tasks, allowing them to work together seamlessly in real-world scenarios. OpenMind envisions a future where intelligent machines operate in harmony, with FABRIC acting as the nervous system for machine coordination.

Source: tweet

CEO Jan Liphardt, also a Stanford professor, emphasized the importance of interoperability in robotics. He noted that many robotic systems today operate in isolated ecosystems. FABRIC seeks to break down those silos by offering a shared layer of coordination and reasoning. 

“If AI is the brain and robotics is the body, coordination is the nervous system,” Liphardt explained. The system is meant to let robots understand their environment, identify other machines nearby, and collaborate effectively.

Strategic Investors Signal Growing Industry Convergence

Pantera Capital’s leadership in the funding round reflects strong confidence in OpenMind’s approach to decentralized AI coordination. Known for its focus on blockchain and decentralized finance, Pantera’s involvement underscores a growing interest in merging fintech and robotics. 

The participation of Coinbase Ventures and Digital Currency Group further illustrates the convergence of crypto-native and traditional tech sectors around secure AI solutions.

OpenMind plans to use the funds to expand its engineering team and deepen research efforts. The company is focusing on real-world deployments in areas like industrial automation, smart infrastructure, and service robotics. These sectors stand to benefit from secure, interoperable systems that allow machines to operate autonomously but in concert.

Decentralization Meets Robotics in Real World

The strategy of OpenMind is also consistent with the growing interest of investors in applying decentralized technology in addressing problems of data integrity and security of AI-driven machines. 

As the number of robots that enter everyday environment increases, a means of trust and coordination in a standardized manner is increasingly important. FABRIC will make this a reality, and that is, enable machines to reason, behave and change collectively in heterogeneous environments.

This financing milestone signals OpenMind on its path to achieving its vision of bringing machine intelligence to everyone in the same way the internet exists.