Peter Thiel-Backed Nonprofit Sentient Aims To Be America's DeepSeek, Takes Aim At Closed AI Systems

Sentient, a San Francisco-based AI development lab backed by Peter Thiel's Founder’s Fund, has unveiled its open-source AI search framework, positioning its work as a response to China's DeepSeek.

What Happened: Sentient released its Open Deep Search (ODS) framework, stating that it outperforms major closed-source competitors like OpenAI's GPT-4o Search Preview and Perplexity Sonar Reasoning Pro, reported Decrypt.

The nonprofit lab argues that its open-source approach challenges the growing control of AI by closed-source corporations. Its ODS achieved a 75.3% accuracy on the FRAMES benchmark, the company said.

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Sentient co-founder Himanshu Tyagi said that the system requires models to synthesize knowledge from multiple sources, avoiding artificial boosts from preloaded data. To enhance efficiency, traditional “ground truth” resources like Wikipedia were intentionally excluded, according to the report.

Why It Matters: The company positioned the release of ODS as America's answer to China’s DeepSeek. As a nonprofit, Sentient advocates for AI development to be community-driven rather than dominated by closed-source corporations.

DeepSeek's AI breakthrough in late January sparked a major selloff in U.S. tech stocks, wiping $593 billion from Nvidia Corp.’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) market value as investors grew concerned about rising competition.

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Last month, DeepSeek released its upgraded V3 model, enhancing its reasoning and coding capabilities.

DeepSeek’s founder, Liang Wenfeng, has also opted to keep the company’s core AI models open-source, rejecting monetization plans.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella has also reportedly acknowledged DeepSeek as a “wake-up call” for the tech giant, urging his teams to focus on creating impactful products.

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