The Ambient network, which positions itself as a potential replacement for Bitcoin, has raised $7.2 million from a16z, Delphi Digital, and Amber Group, according to CoinDesk.

The blockchain aims to provide “super-intelligent AI” quickly, cheaply, and transparently.

Ambient co-founder Travis Good believes that Bitcoin’s encryption mechanisms are “becoming outdated” and could “lose relevance within five years,” creating a business challenge for miners.

“You have people who have invested billions of dollars in hash rate. The question is, what do they do with it?” said the entrepreneur.

Ambient is designed to address this challenge with its “deep capabilities in AI.” Good envisions it as a “decentralized competitor to OpenAI.”

The network utilizes a Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm.

Many crypto projects are attempting to combine blockchain and AI, believing that decentralized crowdsourcing can guide AI for the benefit of humanity better than private corporations.

Unlike market leader Bittensor, which does not run models on the blockchain, Ambient integrates AI into its core.

Will Bitcoin miners — not to mention users — support a radically new and different network? The answer is likely to depend on Ambient’s economic success, according to CoinDesk.

The project aims to provide super-intelligent AI quickly, cheaply, and openly, so users get answers for what they paid for.

Ambient’s security model is similar to that of digital gold, and the network operates like Solana.

Alex Golding from Delphi sees the use of centralized AI by crypto projects as “a major problem,” as it deprives users of the ability to understand how models are trained.

Users also risk being misled by answers based on poor-quality data.

“Verified conclusions” from miners (the core of the reward mechanism) act as fact-checkers, ensuring that the answers provided by Ambient are derived from a model that people paid to use.

In November, developers launched the decentralization-focused AI project Morpheus.