Cambridge, U.K.-based artificial intelligence lab Fetch.ai Ltd. which is building decentralized networks for smart infrastructure and AI-powered peer-to-peer applications, today announced it has raised $40 million in a round led by DWF Labs.

Using Fetch.ai’s platform, developers can build and deploy peer-to-peer applications that can act autonomously on the behalf of users. It uses artificial and machine intelligence to handle things such as booking hotel rooms, hailing rides and finding parking spaces in the most efficient manner possible.

The vision of the company is to provide a framework for developers to build applications capable of connecting digital and real-life economies rapidly to can enable automation over decentralized networks that use data in novel ways.

At the core of that is AI agents that act on the behalf of humans, organizations or machines across networks and can execute business logic. Fetch.ai’s agents operate independently and interact with each other across an immutable, distributed blockchain ledger to store and access their data. That allows them to collaborate, process and negotiate all of their interactions and requires no human interaction.

Any resulting agreements between agents are recorded to the Fetch.ai blockchain using its native token, FET. It’s also the medium of exchange used to pay for services provided by Fetch.ai applications.

Developers have built and trialed several solutions using Fetch.ai’s platform that take advantage of the autonomous AI agent technology. In late 2020, Datarella GmbH, an industrial blockchain solutions company, partnered with Fetch.ai to pilot a smart parking space management program in Germany that would help the providers of parking spaces efficiently match up with clients who needed parking spaces. Fetch.ai’s system would autonomously negotiate the “price” of the parking spaces based on the availability and demand of the spaces and apply AI learning to provide the best possible experience.

Fetch.ai also launched Autonomous AI Travel agents capable of connecting people to over 770,000 hotels worldwide via the Amadeus global distribution system. The network of autonomous agents works to collect data on the behalf of users to book hotel rooms using the company’s peer-to-peer AI and consensus network. Trained on user preferences and hotel room inventory, the agents work to discover the most economical bookings for the users and offer them potential rentals, sometimes saving up to 10%.

Last month, Fetch.ai partnered with German industrial technology supplier Robert Bosch GmbH to found the Fetch.ai Foundation to develop real-world use cases for blockchain technology in mobility, industrial and consumer applications.

Chief Executive Humayun Sheikh said the funding from DWF Labs will help advance the development of decentralized technology and autonomous agents and AI technology. “This investment will help us advance our mission to bring automation and AI capabilities to the forefront of the decentralized technology industry,” he said.

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