Three top web3 projects targeting the burgeoning artificial intelligence sector are joining forces.

On March 27, Ocean Protocol, SingularityNET, and Fetch AI announced they are teaming up to merge their tokens and collaborate on research and development.

The teams describe the partnership as giving rise to a decentralized alternative to the centralized tech firms currently leading development and innovation within the AI industry.

The projects hope their collaboration will facilitate the development of decentralized AI infrastructure at scale, drive investment into projects working towards unlocking Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and accelerate the growth of their respective platforms.

“The deal provides an unprecedented opportunity for these three influential, decentralized leaders to create a powerful compelling alternative to Big Tech’s control over AI development, use, and monetization,” an announcement said. “This first-of-its-kind AI collective seeks to accelerate progress toward decentralized AGI and further toward the next step of Artificial Superintelligence.”

Fetch AI (FET) was founded by Humayun Sheikh, a founding investor in DeepMind, a pioneering general-purpose AI development firm. Fetch is building out a decentralized platform for deploying AI agents that allow users to interact with applications using natural language prompts.

SingularityNET (AGIX), a blockchain-based marketplace for AI services and algorithms, is led by founder, Ben Goertzel, a prominent mathematician and AI theorist. Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) is a platform facilitating the private exchange of tokenized data assets.

Each project submitted governance proposals outlining plans to merge and will initiate 14-day voting windows that will close on April 16. If approved, FET will convert into the new ASI token, while AGIX and OCEAN migrations will launch at a ratio of roughly 0.433 to every ASI.

An announcement said ASI will boast a fully diluted valuation of $7.5 billion and total supply of 2.6 billion tokens once merged.

“Our mission is to combine our platforms to ensure ethical and transparent artificial intelligence to decentralize AI,” Sheikh said. “Decentralized AI facilitates direct interactions between developers and users, bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of centralized authorities.”

“The AI revolution… should be rolled out in an open, democratic, and decentralized way,” Goertzel added. “This has been the joint vision of SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol from their inception.”

The newly merged “tokenomics network” will be overseen by the Superintelligence Collective. Goertzel will lead the project as CEO, Sheikh will take on responsibilities as chairman, and Ocean’s co-founders Bruce Pon and Trent McConaghy will represent their protocol.

While the foundations behind the three projects will continue to operate as distinct entities, they will also collaborate on guiding the operations of the Superintelligence Collective and shared ASI tokenomic ecosystem.

The news comes amid surging interest in the broader artificial intelligence industry. The buzz follows accelerating competition between neural network-based large language models set in motion by the launch of ChatGPT.

Despite AI struggling to find product-market-fit within the web3 sector, AI tokens have been among the strongest performing cryptocurrency segments in recent months.

The combined capitalization of digital assets associated with artificial intelligence grew more than 830% in five months from $ 3.18 billion ngasekupheleni kuka-Okthoba kuya ku-$ 29.6 billion namuhla, ngokusho kukaCoinGecko.