Graph Foundation Grants Cohort 2021 Fellows $60M to Advance Security, Efficiency of Blockchain and Web3
Semiotic AI co-founders Sam Green and Ahmet Ozcan will use the grant over eight years to developed zero-knowledge proofs and deep reinforcement learning, which enable trustless computations and autonomous decision-making in the blockchain.
Blockchain technology promises to transform digital transactions and profoundly impact industries and society. It powers decentralized finance (DeFi) systems that replace conventional money with cryptocurrency, and it could provide safe, secure contracts and robust, verifiable, digital infrastructure for everything from buying and selling carbon offsets to managing insurance claims to protecting consumer data across media platforms. Indeed, blockchain technology is about a lot more than Bitcoin and NFTs. Blockchain technology is also foundational to Web3, the next evolution of the internet, to be powered through a set of protocols that enable fully decentralized, highly secure internet applications.
Ahmet Ozcan, Cohort 2021
But blockchain technology can only live up to its potential if powered by artificial intelligence and advanced cryptography, which enable solutions for trustless computations and autonomous decision-making. So when they joined Activate as Cohort 2021 fellows, we knew Sam Green and Ahmet Ozcan were bound to make waves with Semiotic AI, where they are building a secure protocol to automate negotiations for decentralized markets. Indeed, we were right. Semiotic AI has been awarded a $60M grant—the largest funding award, dilutive or non-dilutive, to an Activate cohort company, to date.
Sam Green, Cohort 2021
The grant is from The Graph Foundation, a non-profit whose mission is to develop further and distribute open-source software tools to support Web3 through what is known as The Graph. The Graph is the indexing and query layer of Web3—a role similar to Google’s on today’s internet.
Semiotic AI will use the grant, to be distributed over eight years, to improve the security, efficiency, and decentralization of the protocol that is foundational to Web3. More specifically, Green and Ozcan specialize in Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) and Deep Reinforcement Learning (RL), which enable trustless computations and autonomous decision-making in the blockchain. Semiotic’s solutions will greatly enhance user experience and economic efficiency of decentralized market-based protocols as Web3 scales.
“The work that Semiotic AI is doing truly represents the frontier of what is being done right now in the context of technological innovation.”
"I am astonished at the professional pedigree and talent of the entire team," says Nick Hansen, ecosystem manager at The Graph Foundation and host of the GRTiQ Podcast, where he interviewed Green. "We're talking about world-class talent—capable of teaching at top universities or running departments at leading technology firms—coming together to apply cutting-edge technology to the future of the internet. It's the type of work that will eventually make its way into history books."
Zero-Knowledge What?
If Green’s and Ozcan’s story sounds a bit unusual for a pair of Activate Fellows, that’s because it is. While all of our fellows are reinventing the economy to be sustainable, resilient, and equitable, most are doing so by advancing hard-tech innovations to decarbonize industry, buildings, chemicals, energy, transportation, or food production. Since DARPA joined as a sponsor in 2018, however, we’ve been fortunate to support 22 fellows whose work focuses on advanced computing and the core technology that supports information systems on which so much of our lives—and energy flows—depend.
We believe that the U.S. offers the world’s best ecosystem for scientific innovation, whether that work is aimed at confronting climate change or building better platforms for communication, commerce, or research. That’s why we partner with leading U.S.-based institutions, such as DARPA, to connect Activate Fellows with the resources, knowledge, and networks they need to succeed. The Activate Fellowship quickens the pace at which our fellows can bring groundbreaking technology to market at scale and with a direct impact on society.
Plus, since DARPA played a central role in advancing ARPANET, a network foundational to today’s internet, it’s fitting that the agency sponsors Cohort 2021 fellows Sam Green and Ahmet Ozcan, who are working diligently to develop the next generation of the internet.
Hansen notes that Green and Ozcan’s work will ripple well beyond Web3. “The work that Semiotic AI is doing truly represents the frontier of what is being done right now in the context of technological innovation," he says. "They are not only bringing their deep expertise in cryptography and artificial intelligence to the emerging blockchain industry and redefining what's possible, but they are also generating ground-breaking threads of new research useful to both of these fields."
Green compares The Graph’s commitment to Web3 development to earlier investments in telecommunications infrastructure. “Consider two classic utilities: telephone and web search. R&D efforts on these utilities resulted in countless inventions that improved communications and access to knowledge for the entire world,” he says. “As a result of this collaboration, we will similarly invent new, open-source technologies that will benefit both users of The Graph and the larger Web3 community."