While decentralized AI promises privacy, autonomy, and agility, it’s the trailblazers on the ground who are wrestling with its most complex challenges. Two leaders, in particular, are emerging as influential voices in this space: Max Li of OORT and Humayun Sheikh of Fetch.ai. Both are carving distinct but complementary paths through the decentralized AI landscape, bringing real-world solutions to what many still consider unsolved problems.
i) Max Li – CEO of OORT
Company: OORT
Focus: Decentralized data infrastructure combining AI and blockchain
Core Mission: Making decentralized AI secure, scalable, and trustworthy
What Sets Him Apart
Max Li has become one of the most vocal advocates for security-first decentralized AI. His company, OORT, builds the kind of blockchain-integrated data systems that allow AI models to be deployed at the edge, while remaining verifiable and tamper-proof. This is particularly vital in industries like healthcare and finance, where one compromised model update could have serious consequences.
In interviews and keynotes, Max often describes the “trust gap” as one of the biggest barriers to scaling local AI. With decentralized models being deployed across thousands of devices, ensuring model integrity and update authenticity becomes non-negotiable.
“You can’t scale local intelligence if you can’t trust its memory,” Max says.
How He’s Tackling the Challenges
Blockchain-backed model versioning to prevent tampering
Zero-trust update pipelines that verify every change
Data provenance systems to track where training data comes from and how it’s used
Max sees decentralized AI not just as a technical shift, but as an ethical one: “It’s not about putting intelligence everywhere—it’s about putting responsibility with it.”
ii) Humayun Sheikh – CEO of Fetch.ai
Company: Fetch.ai
Focus: Autonomous economic agents and decentralized machine learning
Core Mission: Building a framework for secure, collaborative, and intelligent multi-agent ecosystems
What Sets Him Apart
Humayun Sheikh isn’t just thinking about single AI systems, he’s building entire communities of decentralized agents that can operate independently while still working together. Fetch.ai has created a decentralized infrastructure where AI agents ranging from smart mobility bots to energy trading platforms can negotiate, share data, and coordinate without needing central oversight.
One of Fetch.ai’s key innovations is its blockchain-based agent communication protocol, which ensures that all data exchanges are traceable, secure, and fraud-proof.
“If agents can’t talk securely, they can’t collaborate. And if they can’t collaborate, AI stays siloed, “Sheikh emphasized during the– AI Edge World Forum, 2024
How He’s Tackling the Challenges
Agent-based AI framework where models evolve through interaction
Ledger-integrated trust system to verify data and agent actions
Decentralized marketplaces for models, data, and services
Humayun is particularly passionate about enabling “trustless collaboration“, where systems don’t have to trust one another,they just follow transparent, verifiable rules.
Why These Voices Matter
What Max Li and Humayun Sheikh are building isn’t theoretical—it’s operational. Their platforms are already in use across supply chains, energy grids, and data marketplaces.
They’re laying the groundwork for decentralized AI to scale beyond the lab and into real-world environments—where edge devices, local models, and self-learning agents must work securely and autonomously.
Their message is clear: Decentralized AI is coming. But to make it work, we need more than hardware and algorithms, we need visionaries willing to rethink trust, security, and collaboration at every level.
