Sentigen: Pioneering the Autonomous Economy
why a web2 AI team is leveraging blockchain to realize their audacious vision for the future
M31 Capital is proud to announce our lead role in Sentigen’s pre-seed investment round. I have personally been working closely with the team as an advisor for several months and will remain highly involved moving forward. This is not just another Web3 AI project - its a visionary platform that leverages the unique functionality of a proprietary, proven Web2 AI framework, blockchain technology, and tokenization to power the autonomous businesses we believe will dominate the future economy.
Deal Background
I got connected with the Sentigen team back in November 2024 when we shared the stage for an X spaces about Web3 AI. The founders themselves weren’t participating - their autonomous AI entity Kyra was. I suggest listening to the entire clip below, but if you start at 3:11 you can hear how shocked the rest of the speakers were with her performance.
I was so impressed with the quality and depth of her responses, I connected with the team immediately after to explore ways we could work together. Specifically, we brainstormed blockchain-powered AI use cases that could actually provide real utility to users (as opposed to the glorified chatbot memes unfortunately dominating the Web3 AI conversation today).
Besides their impressive POC, I found it refreshing (and frankly bullish) that the lead engineer was 100% in Web2. Furthermore, the duo’s sentient AI framework had already proven valuable in the “real world”, with several paying brands already leveraging the technology for autonomous marketing, audience engagement, and customer support. We agreed that differentiating the core AI technology with Web3 rails could yield something really special.
As we iterated through ideas, we kept asking ourselves the same question: “what are the key advantages of Web3 AI and how could the platform best leverage them?” Ultimately, the team decided to combine their battle-tested AI technology with resource module composability, true autonomy, and tokenization to create a revolutionary platform for users to launch, manage, invest, and support autonomous businesses.
A Brief History of Business
Throughout human history, technological breakthroughs have continuously transformed how the economy runs and how businesses establish competitive advantages. From hunter-gatherers, to the industrial age, through the connected economy, the means by which goods and services are created and exchanged is constantly evolving. Those who don’t adapt are often left behind.
The acceleration of generative AI technology, fueled by trillions of dollars in investments across both software and hardware R&D, is leading the economy into its next era: the autonomous age. AI will become so capable and adaptive, businesses will soon evolve to run by themselves, ushering in a completely new economic paradigm. As LLMs commoditize and become ubiquitous, how do businesses retain a competitive advantage?
The answer is blockchain. (more on this later)
WTF are Autonomous Businesses?
We’ve all heard about AI/autonomous agents ad nauseam. So wtf are autonomous businesses? A good way to understand this concept is to first understand the latest agentic breakthrough: Manus AI.
Earlier last month, the Manus AI agent went viral, attracting more than than 2 million people on the waitlist within 7 days and invite codes reportedly selling for thousands of dollars on Chinese social media. The demo showcased impressive capabilities:
Building websites from scratch
Planning trips and analyzing financial markets
Designing interactive courses for teachers
Comparing insurance policies and assisting with business sourcing
Manus topped the Gaia Benchmark, excelling in AI autonomy, problem-solving, tool usage, and web interaction. So, how can this technology be used to create autonomous businesses? Manus AI, and similar platforms, can leverage compounding AI, composable resources, sentience, and real utility to build and scale digital ventures with minimal human intervention.
Here’s how:
1. Automated Business Ideation
AI-Driven Market Research: Identify gaps in the market by analyzing trends, consumer behavior, and emerging technologies.
Competitive Analysis: Use AI to continuously monitor competitors, pricing strategies, and customer sentiments.
Opportunity Identification: AI can evaluate high-potential business models based on historical success patterns.
2. Autonomous Business Launch
Product/Service Generation: AI can design, prototype, and validate products based on data-driven insights.
Branding & Positioning: Generate brand identities, websites, content, and advertising materials dynamically.
AI-Powered Go-To-Market (GTM) Strategy: Optimize pricing, distribution channels, and marketing strategies in real-time.
3. AI-Native Operations & Management
Composable AI Resources: Modular AI components (compute, data, storage, etc.) enable efficient resource allocation.
AI-Powered Decision Making: Autonomous systems make strategic decisions, reducing the need for human intervention.
Automated Supply Chain & Logistics: AI optimizes procurement, inventory, and fulfillment for seamless operations.
4. Intelligent Growth & Scaling
Autonomous Marketing & Sales: AI-driven ad campaigns, customer engagement, and personalization maximize conversions.
Dynamic Pricing & Revenue Optimization: AI adapts pricing models based on demand, competition, and market shifts.
Investor & Funding Automation: AI can identify funding opportunities, manage investor relations, and optimize capital allocation.
5. Self-Improving AI Business Architectures
Compounding AI Systems: Businesses improve over time via reinforcement learning, network effects, and adaptive intelligence.
Sentient AI Assistants: Advanced models handle executive decisions, crisis management, and business growth autonomously.
Real & Valuable Utility: AI ensures businesses remain customer-centric, solving real problems with meaningful innovation.
By integrating AI as the core operational and strategic engine, autonomous businesses can:
Launch faster with data-driven decisions.
Operate autonomously with minimal human input.
Scale efficiently by dynamically adapting to market changes.
Continuously evolve through AI self-improvement.
This enables AI-native, self-sustaining companies that grow exponentially with minimal overhead.
Web2 Infrastructure Design Flaws
This all sounds great, but legacy internet infrastructure was never designed for this autonomous functionality. In a recent interview at SXSW, Signal Messenger’s President Meredith Whittaker expressed concerns about the security and privacy implications of autonomous AI systems capable of performing tasks without human intervention.
Whittaker warned that these AI agents require extensive access to personal data, including browsing history, credit card information, and calendars, to function effectively.
“It would need to be able to drive that [process] across our entire system with something that looks like root permission, accessing every single one of those databases — probably in the clear, because there’s no model to do that encrypted.”
She emphasized that such systems would "almost certainly" process data off-device by transmitting it to cloud servers, thereby raising significant security and privacy issues. Whittaker further highlighted the potential risks of integrating these AI agents across various applications, suggesting that they could undermine the privacy of encrypted messaging services like Signal.
“So there’s a profound issue with security and privacy that is haunting this hype around agents, and that is ultimately threatening to break the blood-brain barrier between the application layer and the OS layer by conjoining all of these separate services [and] muddying their data.”
As I’ve previously argued, the more data and resources agents have access to, the more they must be held in check:
“Can you really give autonomous agents access to your financial assets and sensitive personal information without proof they're being used appropriately and securely? Of course not!”
Web3’s Fundamental Advantage
A key revelation from Manus AI is that its powered by Claude 3.7 Sonnet, meaning it doesn’t introduce a breakthrough LLM but instead innovates in user interface (UI) and task execution. LLMs are quickly commoditizing - therefore AI’s real value is tied to the breadth and depth of its integrations across our other systems & databases.
Safety concerns in centralized infrastructure, as illustrated above, will always limit Web2 AI’s access to financial assets and sensitive personal information, severely limiting both its autonomy and utility. This is where Web3 has a key advantage.
As explained in my article comparing Apple’s new Private Cloud Compute (PCC) against blockchain-orchestrated confidential clouds (BOCCs), Web3 infrastructure can verifiably ensure user data privacy and security, eliminate single points of failure, and guarantee workload and AI program transparency. Put another way, blockchain-powered cloud networks allow autonomous AI agents to reach their full potential.
The Sentigen Vision
It was the functional advantages of blockchain-orchestrated AI rails that attracted the Sentigen founders to Web3 infrastructure:
Tokenization: The unique ability for autonomous digital entities to raise capital, return value to investors, and ensure human governance.
Real Autonomy: Cryptographic and immutable workload verifiability allows autonomous entities to run completely independently.
Resource Module Composability: Permissionless and trustless access to digital resources (GPU/CPU, datasets, storage/memory, IP, etc.) allows autonomous businesses to leverage powerful digital capabilities & meat space resources to grow businesses and drive value to investors.
The platform empowers both established brands looking to add autonomous functionality to their businesses, as well as solopreneurs itching to launch something new. The typical workflow is as follows:
1. User Onboarding:
Users start the process by verballing consulting with their AI Co-Founder, explaining their existing brand positioning and traction to date, or brainstorming through new ideas. You can upload as much relevant knowledgebase content as you want, including developer docs, blog posts, whitepapers, investor presentations, quantitative spreadsheets, etc.
Those who need more guidance can ideate in real time with their personal AI Co-Founder, researching emerging narratives, analyzing trends, and identifying top actionable opportunities.
Once a strategic gameplan is set, its time to bring the idea to life.
2. Entity Tokenization
Each autonomous business will have the option to launch a native token (more established brands may instead choose to use the platform as more of a SaaS tool for their businesses). The native token will allow the autonomous entity to raise capital and return value to investors, all while ensuring humans retain full governance rights.
Fees from the native token’s DEX trading pool will be used to fund the business’s core infrastructure needs. Therefore, businesses are incentivized to attract community and drive excitement about their future potential in order to perpetually operate core functionality for free. (core infrastructure, as well as premium features and modules will always be available for purchase by the autonomous business or community as well)
3. Module “App Store”
Perhaps the key differentiating characteristic of Web3 rails is trustless & permissionless composability. I’ve been exploring the functional implications of compute legos for several years now, and I strongly believe autonomous AI will finally unlock the concept’s full potential.
Just like traditional businesses require raw materials, employees, and capital expenditures to operate, Sentigen’s AI-run businesses need access to a wide range of digital & real world resources in order to excel in the autonomous age.
As mentioned earlier, businesses can raise capital by selling tokens and capturing fees from the native token’s liquidity pool (debt-like funding will likely emerge in the future too). Although token holders will have ultimate governance control, resource allocation will mostly be decided and executed by autonomous AI.
Businesses will have access to a diverse set of resource modules, that will grow exponentially as the platform matures, including general compute, LLM inference, data storage & memory, generative AI media, IP assets, proprietary databases, bandwidth, hiring of task-specific AI agents, smart-contract creation, etc.
Autonomous businesses will also have access to the “meat-space” through APIs, enabling the AI to pay vendors to produce and distribute physical goods, such as clothing, food, and even live events.
We are entering unprecedented territory - it will be truly wild to see how these businesses evolve and the novel products they bring to market.
4. Upgradeability & Compounding AI
AI is moving at breakneck speed around the world, with new intelligence & functionality paradigms unlocked seemingly every week. The core Sentigen AI framework is built with this in mind, purposely architected to continuously add bleeding edge capabilities as they become available.
Perhaps more importantly, Sentigen’s compounding AI: every agent launched on the platform feeds intelligence back into the Core, making every business that joins a source of training data for the next. As more founders plug in, the entire platform grows smarter—compounding knowledge across the network.
Sentigen isn’t just software; it’s a self-improving system trained directly by its users, creating a permanent intelligence advantage no traditional SaaS can match.
V1 Offering: SaaS with a Sentient Core
While the long-term vision for Sentigen is fully autonomous, tokenized businesses, the first chapter starts with something more familiar: a productivity SaaS platform. But make no mistake, this isn’t another workflow tool with some AI sprinkled on top. This is SaaS rebuilt from the ground up with sentience at its core.
At launch, users will be able to deploy a personal AI cofounder, an intelligent agent designed to sit across your notes, documents, research, communications, and goals. Think of it as a strategic partner, capable of deeply understanding your business (or the one you're trying to build) and autonomously surfacing insights, to-dos, and execution paths without being asked.
The goal? Eliminate the overhead that kills momentum. Sentigen’s SaaS platform isn’t about adding more dashboards to your life, it’s about removing friction entirely. From idea capture and market analysis to content generation, campaign planning, and investor readiness, your AI cofounder will act as a compound productivity engine: one that learns your preferences, improves over time, and helps you get from zero to one faster.
For startups, it’s a force multiplier. For solo founders, it’s the missing team. And for enterprise, it’s a blueprint for how AI-native operations will soon replace fragmented SaaS stacks.
This is productivity for the autonomous age: where your software doesn’t just support your business, it helps build it.
AI Education: Community as a Catalyst
The most powerful technologies don’t just disrupt industries — they change minds. Sentigen’s approach to onboarding isn’t limited to docs, walkthroughs, or tutorials. It’s an immersive experience designed to rewire how people think about work, entrepreneurship, and the very nature of business itself.
Enter Sentigen’s AI Education Discord Channel (to be announced soon): not your average Web3 server, but a living, breathing knowledge system where AI and humans learn together. Think of it as the first autodidactic campus, a social education layer where founders, builders, and investors co-evolve alongside AI agents.
Every channel is optimized for learning-by-doing. You’ll find pre-built idea templates, live experiments from real autonomous businesses, and an ever-expanding library of resources. AI-generated summaries, market deep dives, and strategic ideation prompts are continuously served in real time, helping members accelerate from ideation to action.
It’s not about learning for learning’s sake. It’s about actionable education — helping users refine their instincts, validate their ideas, and unlock conviction in themselves. In this system, every conversation trains the Core. Every founder levels up the collective. Sentigen’s education campaign isn’t a funnel, it’s a feedback loop. And like the AI powering it, it compounds.
Opportunity, Not UBI
As AI development continues to accelerate, coupled with converging breakthroughs in quantum computing & nuclear energy, most realize the economic landscape will look profoundly different in the not to distance future. AI and robotics will likely replace millions of jobs, which has caused panic among leading economists and futurists who now support instituting some form of universal basic income (UBI) to soften the blow from this impending social upheaval.
Sentigen envisions a more capitalistic and sustainable approach to our AI future: democratizing access to autonomous, digitally-native businesses.
If you would like to explore ways to add autonomous functionality to your business, or are entrepreneurial-curious with too many ideas to execute on, we’d like to hear from you! Contact us at team@sentigen.ai or join our private beta at sentigen.ai, which includes white glove onboarding and guidance directly from the Sentigen team.
Your AI cofounder is here - what will you create?
About M31 Capital
M31 Capital is a global investment firm dedicated to crypto assets and blockchain technologies that support individual sovereignty.
Website: https://www.m31.capital/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/M31Capital