“From decentralized ideas to collective impact, this is what the future of AI looks like.”

The vibrant city of Istanbul became a crossroads for innovation, ethics, and community as global pioneers in decentralized AI gathered for BGI Nexus 2025, a landmark moment in the SingularityNET and Deep Funding journey.

Hosted in one of the world’s most culturally diverse cities, the Nexus gathering brought together builders, researchers, creators, and community leaders exploring the future of AI, governance, and human-centered technology. More than a summit, it was a living demonstration of what happens when decentralization meets collective intelligence.

The Spirit of Deep Funding: Building Together

At its core, Deep Funding exists to empower builders to create decentralized, ethical AI technologies with global impact. Nexus embodied this mission in motion: members who once collaborated only online finally met face-to-face, shared progress, debated governance, and celebrated projects born from the DAO’s ecosystem.

From early-stage innovators to established teams, participants showcased how Deep Funding nurtures a self-sustaining network of creators pushing toward a more equitable AI future.

Discussions throughout the event circled around:

• Trustless systems
  
• Collective sensemaking
  
• AI safety
  
• Human-aligned design
  
• The power of community-driven funding
  

One theme echoed everywhere: alignment between human values and technological progress. Every conversation reinforced the Deep Funding ethos, the future of AI must be transparent, participatory, and beneficial for all.

Highlights from the BGI Nexus Session

“We’re not just talking about BGI, we’re building it.”
Those words from Haley Lowy, Co-Director of BGI Nexus, set the tone for one of the most impactful sessions of the summit. Her message was clear: this is the place where the future of ethical AI is being co-created.

In Dr. Ben Goertzel’s words:
“There’s a lot of talk about ethics in AI, but not a lot of actual ethics in AI. What we see here today is the real thing, people building systems that turn ethical AI from theory into practice.”

A Nexus for Beneficial AI

Haley introduced the BGI Nexus as a connective layer, a space designed to bring together people building beneficial AI across research, community, and technology.

The Nexus is powered by three pillars:

1. Grant Funding

Empowering ethical, accessible, and open AI solutions.

2. Resource Flow

Enabling people worldwide to contribute skills, time, and compute, not just capital.

3. Shared Frameworks & Developer Tools

Providing guidance, safety frameworks, and collaboration infrastructure so projects can build responsibly and at scale.

Together, these pillars bridge vision and execution, creating a coordinated ecosystem for beneficial AI.

Crowdsourcing Wisdom and Resources

Since its inception, BGI has distributed $450,000 to projects spanning continents, from agriculture to digital inclusion.

Haley highlighted transformative early projects:

• Farmlingua: multilingual AI empowering smallholder farmers in Africa

• GlucoseDAO: tackling global diabetes using predictive, open-source AI

• Bionexus: supporting farmers and bio-innovators across Nigeria

• Think Inclusion: making global participation more accessible

Each began as a simple idea, scaled into real-world impact through grant support and community collaboration.

To expand this movement, BGI introduced Utsa, a resource-matching platform affectionately called “Tinder for Beneficial AI.”

Co-creator Sin described Utsa as a way to connect people with meaningful work:

“It closes the ikigai gap, the space between what you love, what you’re good at, and what the world needs.”

Utsa uses AI-powered matching to pair contributors with projects aligned to their purpose, visualizing their journey through an interactive mandala.

Collective Sensemaking and Human Values

Social scientist Esther Galfalvi reminded the audience:

“Every person on this planet is now a stakeholder in AI.”

To understand global values, the BGI team has been collecting insights through interviews, surveys, and community conversations, much of it supported by the SingularityNET Ambassador Program.

To scale this globally, they introduced Nexi, an interactive AI agent capable of gathering human insight across languages and cultures.

Nexi listens. Learns. Synthesizes.
Then transforms community voices into actionable knowledge for developers.

“Nexi helps developers understand what people need, not just technically, but emotionally and culturally.” — Esther

AI Safety, Ethics, and Developer Tools

The third Nexus pillar focuses on empowering teams to build responsibly.

Esther presented the AI Safety & Ethics Framework, a practical toolkit offering:

• Risk taxonomies

• Safety guidance

• Auditing processes

• Developer support tools

One of the most exciting components is the Developer Companion, a tool that integrates safety and ethics into the workflow of any team, big or small.

“This isn’t regulation as punishment. It’s empowerment.” — Esther

Working groups were formed to co-develop these resources, ensuring diverse perspectives and real-world needs shape the future of ethical AI.

The GlucoseDAO Example: Where AI Meets Human Experience

One of the session’s most powerful moments came from Livia of GlucoseDAO, who lives with Type 1 diabetes.

“For many diabetics, life is like driving a manual car, constant adjustments, no autopilot.”

Her project uses community data-sharing and open-source models to predict glucose levels before problems arise. They even built Sugar Sugar, a gamified tool comparing human vs. AI accuracy, turning complex predictive modeling into an engaging community activity.

GlucoseDAO captured the heart of the Nexus: AI that is meaningful because it is personal.

“The Future Has Not Been Written.”

As the session concluded, Dr. Ben Goertzel offered heartfelt praise:

“These four remarkable women are actually doing the thing, funding real teams, creating real systems, and showing the world what ethical AI looks like in practice.”

Haley closed with a reminder of what makes the Nexus powerful:

“Imagine what’s possible when everyone participates. The future hasn’t been written and we’re writing it together.”

Looking Ahead

The impact of BGI Nexus 2025 is only beginning.

The relationships formed, ideas shared, and commitments made in Istanbul will shape the next chapter of Deep Funding and the broader SingularityNET ecosystem. The coming phase will prioritize:

• Strengthening project follow-ups
  
• Empowering regional hubs
  
• Refining governance and DAO participation
  
• Expanding beneficial AI tooling
  
• Scaling global community conversations

The spirit of the Nexus is the spirit of collaboration, ethics, and community-led innovation.

What began in Istanbul will ripple outward for years to come.

About Deep Funding

Deep Funding is a community-driven grant program within the SingularityNET ecosystem. Its mission is to empower global builders to develop decentralized, ethical AI solutions with real-world impact.

🔗 Learn more: deepfunding.ai

Follow us: Twitter · LinkedIn · Telegram