Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) and decentralized AI infrastructure company Zero Gravity (0G) today unveiled a S$5 million joint research hub aimed at building the next generation of open, verifiable and accountable AI systems. Launched on November 8, 2025, the four-year initiative will fund multiple projects that combine blockchain and AI research, spanning decentralized model training, blockchain-integrated model alignment, and novel proof-of-useful-work consensus mechanisms.
The hub represents 0G’s first university collaboration anywhere in the world and is designed to bridge academic research with scalable infrastructure for open AI. Unlike conventional AI systems that operate inside closed servers controlled by private firms, the partners say blockchain-based approaches will make each step, from data and training to inference and output, auditable and tamper-evident. That transparency, they argue, will be critical to building AI that the public can trust.
“Open and trustworthy AI depends on a foundation that is decentralized and accountable,” said Prof Phee. “NTU has built world-class expertise in blockchain systems, cryptography and computing. By working with 0G, we aim to design a next-generation, innovative AI stack that enables global participation and transparency for everyone.”
Democratizing AI
For 0G, the partnership aligns with a broader push to democratize AI. “Our mission is to make AI a public good,” said Michael Heinrich, CEO and Co-founder of 0G. “By partnering with NTU, we are aligning with a global leader in blockchain and computing research to move beyond centralised AI monopolies. Together, we will build an open ecosystem where developers, institutions, and communities can contribute, verify, and audit.”
The collaboration will be jointly led by Professor Wen Yonggang, NTU Associate Provost (Graduate Education) and Dean of the Graduate College, together with Dr Ming Wu, 0G’s Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer. Their teams will focus on building decentralized computing architectures and secure AI marketplaces that reward contributors for data and computing resources, creating economic incentives for broad participation in AI development.
NTU’s College of Computing and Data Science and the Centre in Computational Technologies for Finance (CCTF) will steer research on scalable model training, AI governance, and blockchain-enabled security frameworks. The programme also includes a practical pipeline for talent development: workshops, hackathons, student scholarships and open-source projects aimed at nurturing Asia’s next generation of decentralized AI talent.
Early proof-of-concepts are expected within the first two years, with pilot applications targeted at finance, healthcare and smart infrastructure, sectors where transparent, auditable decision-making and verifiable data provenance could have immediate value. The announcement comes against the backdrop of significant private investment in 0G.
The company recently disclosed over US$325 million in committed funding, including a US$40 million seed round led by Hack VC with participation from Delphi Ventures, OKX Ventures, Samsung Next and Animoca Brands. 0G describes itself as a modular, infinitely scalable Layer 1 protocol that unifies decentralized storage, compute and data availability to support AI-native use cases, with verifiable processing and a permissionless agent ecosystem.
For Singapore, the partnership reinforces a national push to position the city-state as a hub for trustworthy and open AI development. NTU, a research-intensive public university with roughly 35,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students across its colleges, brings deep expertise in computing and cryptography as well as a history of large research collaborations. Under its Smart Campus vision, NTU has emphasized tech-enabled learning, sustainability and applied research; the university also notes its strong record on sustainability and campus design.
Leaders on both sides framed the hub not as a defensive measure against closed AI stacks but as an invitation to a broader ecosystem. By creating open, verifiable systems and marketplaces, NTU and 0G hope to lower the barriers for developers, institutions and communities to contribute compute, data and models, and to be rewarded for that participation. The research hub will run for four years, with the partners saying they expect the work to seed international collaborations and help scale decentralized intelligence beyond Singapore.
