MyShell raises $11 million to challenge OpenAI with democratic AI vision
Key Takeaways
- MyShell has raised $11 million in a pre-series funding round led by Dragonfly for its decentralized AI platform.
- Unlike dominant AI companies like OpenAI, MyShell aims to build “a more open, collaborative, and democratic AI environment.”
- This approach has led to the success of various projects on platforms such as OpenVoice, MeloTTS, and Allice.
Decentralized AI creator platform MyShell has raised $11 million in a pre-Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to $16.6 million.
A variety of high-profile investors participated in this investment round, including Dragonfly, Delphi Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Maven11 Capital, Nascent, Nomad Capital, and OKX Ventures. Several prominent angel investors also contributed, such as Balaji Srinivasan (former Coinbase CTO), Illia Polosukhin (NEAR Protocol co-founder), Casey K. Caruso (former Paradigm investment partner), and Santiago R. Santos (former Parafi partner). In this round of financing.
Ethan Sun, CEO of MyShell, noted that the new funding will greatly help transform the AI creator ecosystem. The goal is to create a more open, collaborative, and democratic environment in AI development.
With this investment, MyShell aims to expand its operations and further its mission to build a community-driven AI ecosystem.
MyShell is distinguished by its AI Creator Ecosystem, which includes toolkits and incubation programs designed to simplify the app building process for creators.
The platform, which has over 1 million registered users and 50,000 creators, plans to allocate its newly secured funds to developing open source-based models, empowering AI creators, promoting a democratic AI creator platform, and supporting the open source community.
Unlike major AI entities like OpenAI, MyShell emphasizes decentralization and open source development.
This approach has led to the success of various projects on platforms such as OpenVoice, MeloTTS, and Allice. These projects highlight MyShell’s commitment to providing innovative and accessible AI solutions through OpenVoice, which has nearly 20,000 stars on Github, MeloTTS, a groundbreaking text-to-speech solution, and Allice, which serves as a foundational model for AI app development workflows. do.
Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly, highlighted the growing demand for personalized AI experiences and praised MyShell’s use of cryptocurrency and decentralization to empower users and creators within the AI ecosystem.
Qureshi emphasized that the MyShell team’s technical expertise and research background makes it well-positioned to execute on its vision amid the current hype about the intersection of cryptocurrency and AI.
The investment in MyShell highlights its pioneering role in the AI creator platform space through its open value network and revenue-sharing economic model.
The platform’s unique features, such as “workshops” for building AI agents and “makerspaces” for no-code app development, further strengthen MyShell’s mission to democratize AI creation. This approach not only fosters innovation and collaboration, but also fosters an ecosystem where all participants have the opportunity to impact the AI landscape.
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