At the moment, blockchain and AI are two of the Top/most highly discussed cutting-edge technologies, making their impact across different business verticals. While the technologies are usually used independently, there are some startups which are combining the two to enable powerful business solutions. 

From data marketplaces to decentralised machine learning models, and crowdsourcing, startups are coming up with unique products that combine blockchain with AI. The main argument is that with the combination of the two technologies, data can be stored, accessed and processed without requiring a centralised server/database, with an emphasis on traceability and data immutability for achieving trust.

In this article, we take a look at the top startups, which utilise Artificial Intelligence- AI and blockchain (or tokenised crypto assets) for their technology products: 

SingularityNET

SingularityNET is a full-stack AI solution powered by a decentralised protocol. SingularityNET wants to use machine learning and blockchain to democratise access to AI technology. The company wants to help other organisations with limited in-house machine learning and AI capabilities again, which can explore and connect to open AI marketplace (currently in beta) on the Ethereum blockchain.

Top Global Startups Using AI & Blockchain In Their Technology Products

Numer.ai – Decentralised AI Hedge Fund On A Blockchain

Next in the list of AI and blockchain startups is Numer.ai – an AI based crowd-sourcing fund in San Francisco, and was started by South African technologist Richard Craib in October 2015. Numerai’s trades are made using an AI model and powered by a decentralised crowdsourcing blockchain network of anonymous data scientists. The startup raised money from Howard Morgan of Renaissance Technologies, in addition to famed investor Naval Ravikant.

The Numer.ai hedge fund network hosts weekly data science tournaments, in which data scientists for crowdsourcing market predictions.

Top Global Startups Using AI & Blockchain In Their Technology Products

Ocean Protocol is an ecosystem for the data-based economy and linked services, with a tokenised service layer, which securely exposes data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption. The company culminates together decentralised innovation and a trust framework, which allows for data to be exchanged with guaranteeing traceability, transparency, and privacy on the blockchain, to enable data owners to have control of their data assets while having access to a range of services.

The Ocean protocol has a tokenised service layer, which makes available data, storage, compute and algorithms for consumption with a set of deterministic proofs on availability and integrity that serve as verifiable service agreements. Any data marketplace can connect into Ocean to have “last mile” services, connecting data service providers and consumers. The Ocean protocol is built in a way that data owners control each dataset and cannot be locked into any single marketplace.

Top Global Startups Using AI & Blockchain In Their Technology Products

NuCypher: Advanced Privacy Layer

NuCypher is a cryptographic infrastructure for privacy-preserving applications, and its KMS helps developers secure their data on the Ethereum blockchain. Instead of creating an open-source end-to-end encrypted database, NuCypher is working on a proxy re-encryption platform for businesses with large amounts of sensitive data stored in encrypted databases to let them securely access into the power of cloud computing. While proxy re-encryption has been an area of cryptography, using it with big data is what is NuCypher’s value. 

The team at NuCypher is focused mostly on looking at data archiving and encryption to enable enterprises to make use of cloud storage and processing. The platform helps generate a re-encryption token of the public key of an entity with whom its customers wish to share data. The token can then be uploaded to the cloud where the third party can access it — in turn enabling them to decrypt and access the data. Users can conditionally grant and revoke access to sensitive data to arbitrary numbers of recipients. So, businesses can process encrypted data while preserving the confidentiality of the inputs and results.

Top Global Startups Using AI & Blockchain In Their Technology Products

DeepBrain Chain: P2P AI Computing Platform

Using blockchain technology, Singapore-based DeepBrain Chain has built a decentralised, low-cost and privacy-protecting AI computing platform with a full range of related products and services. DeepBrain Chain calls itself a decentralised neural network, where countless nodes across the world supply computational power to AI companies and receive DBC token as rewards on the NEO blockchain. According to DeepBrain Chain, it runs a secure data trading platform which, by separating data ownership from data usage helps in creating data privacy. DeepBrain Chain’s platform automatically matches computing power requests with computing power resources without any intermediate cost to the users.