a16z Crypto and Sequoia Capital-backed Personal Intelligence Network Launches

Key Takeaways

• PIN AI, the Personal Intelligence Network, launched on Thursday, Feb. 13.
• The blockchain-based AI platform proposes an alternative to Big Tech personal assistants.
• Co-founders Bill Sun and Ben Wu discussed the project with CCN.

With interest in decentralized AI solutions on the rise, venture capital investors like a16z Crypto and Sequoia Capital have got in on the action.

Both have thrown their weight behind a new blockchain-based platform that aims to give AI users more control over their personal data.

Launched on Thursday, Feb. 13, PIN AI (Personal Intelligence Network) enables more personalized AI assistants without sacrificing data sovereignty to the Big Tech monopolies that currently dominate the market.

Decentralized AI Against Big Tech Data Monopolies

In the world of virtual assistants, a handful of big names including Apple, Amazon and Google have traditionally dominated.

With the advent of powerful foundation AI models in recent years, OpenAI and Microsoft have become more important, but overall, Big Tech maintains an outsized influence on the technology.

In an interview with CCN, PIN AI Co-founder Ben Wu pointed to privacy shortcomings in the Big Tech model, which gives users little control over their personal data.

At the same time, Big Techs “are not opening up their platforms to create a kind of open data sharing […] which is essential for personalized experiences,” he added.

PIN AI seeks to solve both problems posed by Big Tech data monopolies.

On the one hand, it lets users run AI locally and connect to other apps in a secure manner.

On the other, it gives developers the tools to integrate various third-party data streams into their AI apps. 

AI at the Edge

Even though Apple and Google have both moved toward more on-device AI, their continued reliance on cloud-based models means users of Big Tech assistants must sacrifice control of their data if they want to enjoy more personalized experiences. 

However, Wu observed that “in the future, we think personal AI is going to happen on the edge,” using a term that refers to on-device processing.

To balance privacy, performance, and personalization, PIN AI deploys a hybrid model that combines on-device and cloud-based processing. This ensures sensitive operations remain local while leveraging powerful cloud models for complex tasks. 

This hybrid approach extends to how the platform stores and organizes data.

A key feature of PIN AI is the Personal Index—a knowledge graph that organizes user data from various on-device and cloud sources to provide contextually relevant and personalized responses.

PIN AI Personal Index

Thanks to the Personal Index, Wu said the aim is to provide services that are not only more private and secure but more personalized and useful than Big Tech AI.

For example, PIN AI’s Chief Scientist Bill Sun described a scenario in which a user wanted their AI to order some food.

By collating not just their order history, but additional context like social media follows and YouTube views, personalized AI could figure out what kind of food they like and what their typical budget might be.

The platform can then “combine all this contextual information to generate a personalized transaction request to all kinds of service providers,” he added.

These service providers could be big ones like Uber Eats or DoorDash. However, whereas only the largest app developers have the resources to develop Siri or Alexa integrations, Sun said more open AI systems could pave the way for “smaller, mom-and-pop stores” to participate too.