AntSeed

AntSeed launched on October 6, 2026, applying BitTorrent's peer-to-peer model to AI inference: a local router picks providers by price, speed, reputation and privacy, and requests travel directly over an encrypted connection.

The same day the nonprofit AntSeed Foundation disclosed a $2.4 million token round led by Spark Capital, with Collider, DCG, North Island Ventures, Reciprocal Ventures, Relay Capital and Venice.ai participating.

AntSeed offers a gateway console, a desktop AI VPN and a command-line proxy that point Claude Code, Codex and OpenCode at one address, covering more than 700 models and settling each request in USDC on Base.

Unlike OpenRouter, AntSeed runs no central forwarding platform and only handles discovery, routing, reputation and payment; providers set their own prices and can run inside TEEs that hide prompts.

The protocol is open source and usable, but compatibility issues with Codex and Claude Desktop are still being fixed; whether model fingerprints and signed responses can stop misrepresentation will decide if real supply forms.

AntSeed launched its peer-to-peer AI inference network on October 6, 2026 and disclosed a $2.4M token round for the nonprofit Antseed Foundation, led by Spark Capital (an early Anthropic backer) with DCG, North Island Ventures, Reciprocal Ventures, Relay Capital and Venice.ai. A self-hosted local router routes inference requests without a central account or API key, with leading models priced up to 97% below official APIs. As of September 2026 the network had processed nearly 150B tokens across 202 active sellers, settling over $285k on Base.

AntSeed's rival is not another chain but centralized aggregators such as OpenRouter — being acquired by Stripe for more than $7 billion, which shows routing itself has become a toll gate. AntSeed pushes routing to a local client, settles in USDC on Base, takes a 4% protocol fee, and replaces platform vetting with ANTS staking and reputation scores so more than 200 providers compete directly on price and privacy. Verification is the precondition for scale: model fingerprinting, signed responses and TEE-backed confidential inference decide whether cheap compute can be trusted, and who bears the cost when agents call each other autonomously.

Amos Meiri is co-founder and chief executive. He studied on the honours programme at the College of Management Israel from 2007 to 2010 and began his career running the dealing desk at the online trading platform eToro. He founded the digital wallet company Colu in 2014 and led it as chief executive for six years before becoming chairman, then joined Node Capital as a founding partner in 2021. He launched this project with Shahaf Antwarg in 2026 and sets the overall direction.

Shahaf Antwarg is co-founder and chief technology officer. He started as a full stack engineer at B2CPrint in New York and has spent his career on Web3 engineering. He co-founded the NFT marketplace NFTrade in 2021 as its chief technology officer before starting this project with Amos Meiri in 2026, where he leads protocol engineering and the research team.

Leon Stern is chief marketing officer. He has long led brand work and community growth in crypto and technology, joined in 2026 reporting to the chief executive and handles external communication, developer relations and partner liaison.