---
title: "MIT Spinoff Funded $143M to Create Sentient Computers"
description: "A new generation of Artificial Intelligence may come to life with a start-up's plan to create sentient distributed artificial intelligence."
date: "2014-12-08"
modified: "2015-08-13"
authors:
  - name: "Oana Stefanescu"
    link: "https://futurism.com/authors/kidco"
url: "https://futurism.com/mit-spinoff-funded-143m-create-sentient-computers"
categories:
  - "Artificial Intelligence"
  - "Computers"
  - "Computing"
  - "Robots and Machines"
tags:
  - "artificial intelligence"
---

# MIT Spinoff Funded $143M to Create Sentient Computers

![](<https://futurism.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/rcj_sentient_AI_artificial-intelligenc.jpg>)

- The software for sentient computers, which they are already installing at key customer sites, goes beyond natural language recognition, unstructured searching, machine learning, and deep knowledge.
- "Sentience is being aware, having perceptions, being mindful, and has implications of autonomy," chief technology officer Nigel Duffy
- Sentient Technologies has shunned the usual venture capital route to glory by instead enlisting support from its actual users in the fields of finance, consumer, food/beverage, and real estate for the last seven years,quietly showing demonstrations of how its distributed artificial intelligence works for medical research, financial trading, and other big data applications.