OriginTrail Selected by Microsoft for AI Demo at 2025 ChangeNOW Conference

OriginTrail has announced that it has been selected by Microsoft to showcase AI capabilities at the upcoming ChangeNOW Summit 2025 in Paris, in a move that underscores the growing significance of projects at the convergence of decentralization and artificial intelligence (AI). 

Scheduled from April 24 to 26, 2025, at the Grand Palais in Paris, the ChangeNOW Summit is renowned for bringing together innovators, investors, companies, media, and cities to address the planet’s most pressing challenges. The event serves as a nexus for showcasing actionable solutions aimed at accelerating environmental and social transitions. 

Having originally launched in 2018 as a supply chain solution, OriginTrail has gone on to establish itself as a decentralized knowledge hub, leveraging blockchain technology to create a “verifiable internet” tailored for AI applications. By integrating crypto, internet, and AI, OriginTrail ensures that data utilized by AI models is both discoverable and trustworthy. 

These capabilities are enabled by the project’s Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), which organizes data into interconnected nodes, allowing for efficient data sharing and verification across various platforms. This architecture enhances the reliability of AI outputs by ensuring data integrity, providing much-needed visibility into the so-called AI “black box.” 

The DKG’s versatility supports integration with prominent AI platforms, including Google Vertex AI, OpenAI, and NVIDIA. These integrations enable seamless data interoperability, allowing AI models to access and process verified information from diverse sources. Such collaborations not only bolster the accuracy of AI-driven insights but also promote a more transparent AI ecosystem.

Reducing Online Harm

In a related development, OriginTrail recently secured an investment from Umanitek, a company dedicated to enhancing internet safety. Umanitek focuses on partnerships with those deploying technologies that mitigate harmful content, address intellectual property infringements, and combat the spread of fake news. By partnering with firms that have developed scalable solutions, Umanitek aims to amplify the reach of technologies capable of reducing online harm. 

Umanitek and OriginTrail also have shared roots in the form of Trace Labs, the core developers behind OriginTrail, who are also part of Umanitek’s founding team. This synergy ensures that the technological advancements of OriginTrail’s DKG are effectively harnessed to promote a safer and more trustworthy internet environment. Chris Rynning, Chairman of Umanitek, emphasized this commitment, stating, “We invested in OriginTrail to drive transparency and trust for any real-world asset. Now, we have co-founded Umanitek to combat harmful content, IP infringements, and fake news, using the OriginTrail technology across internet platforms.” 

Microsoft’s collaboration with OriginTrail and the establishment of Umanitek may signify the beginning of a broader industry shift towards decentralized AI solutions. While centralized AI platforms like OpenAI have traditionally dominated the landscape, they have come under heavy criticism from regulators, privacy campaigners, and copyright owners for a lack of transparency in how their models operate and are trained. Even Sam Altman himself recently admitted that his firm is “on the wrong side of history” in regards to transparency in AI. 

In contrast, decentralized platforms like OriginTrail’s DKG can point to enhanced data verifiability and security. Microsoft’s apparent embrace of a decentralized solution as part of its ChangeNOW demo underscores a growing recognition of the value that decentralized systems bring to the AI ecosystem.  

As the ChangeNOW Summit approaches and unites firms around its vision of accelerating the transition to a more sustainable world, the spotlight will be on how such collaborations can drive meaningful change, fostering a more transparent and secure digital future.