Pi Network Ventures backs OpenMind to build decentralized OS for robots

Pi Network Ventures has made its first-ever investment by backing OpenMind, a company developing a decentralized OS for robots, building on the momentum of OpenMind’s earlier $20M funding round.

Summary

• OpenMind is developing OM1, a hardware-agnostic OS for robots, and FABRIC, a protocol that enables secure identity verification, collaboration, and coordination across machines.
• A proof-of-concept experiment using Pi Network’s 350,000+ nodes demonstrated that the decentralized network can handle real AI workloads, allowing node operators to earn Pi for contributing compute power.
• Following the pilot, OpenMind plans to expand OM1 and FABRIC development, refine pilot programs, and onboard additional partners over the next year.

Pi Network Ventures makes its first-ever strategic investment

Pi Network Ventures, the investment arm of Pi Network (PI), has announced its first-ever investment, backing OpenMind, a company developing a decentralized OS for robots.

OpenMind is building OM1, an OS designed to give robots a unified way to perceive, reason, and act across different hardware platforms. Built on top of it is FABRIC, a protocol that enables robots to identify, verify, and collaborate with each other securely in both physical and digital environments.

The investment aims to connect Pi Network’s global decentralized node ecosystem with OpenMind’s robotics technology, enabling a shared computational and economic framework for both humans and machines.

According to OpenMind CTO Boyuan Chen, “Our mission has always been to create open infrastructure for intelligence that exists in the real world, not just in the cloud. Working with Pi Network helps us extend that idea across both robotics and decentralized computing.”

OpenMind previously closed a $20M funding round led by Pantera Capital in August 2025, with backing from Coinbase Ventures, Ribbit, Topology, Pebblebed, and other prominent investors.

Ahead of the investment, OpenMind and Pi Network conducted a proof-of-concept experiment to test distributed AI processing using Pi’s global node network. Over 350,000 active Pi Nodes participated by providing unused computing resources for OpenMind’s image recognition models.

The results confirmed that Pi’s decentralized network could handle real AI workloads, turning the system into a large-scale, peer-powered AI cluster. Node operators were able to earn Pi for contributing their compute power, showcasing the potential of distributed AI training and inference without relying on centralized cloud providers.

Following the successful pilot, OpenMind plans to expand development of OM1 and FABRIC, refine pilot deployments, and onboard additional partners over the next year.