Pioneering Blockchain Artificial Intelligence (AI) marketplace SingularityNET has announced a $36 mln ICO to fund its expansion.

Announcing the fairly modest funding goal for the world’s first such AI marketplace, SingularityNET’s robotic ‘chief humanoid officer’ confirmed the 500 mln token event at its recent Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal.

A combination of private and public sales will distribute the tokens, with the ICO concluding when all are sold or when the $36 mln figure has been reached.

Participants are required to register on a whitelist prior to the sale beginning Dec. 8.

“The exact amount of tokens available in the crowdsale depends on private sales, which have not yet been finalized,” an accompanying press release states.

SingularityNET has sparked considerable interest in its bid to open up the hitherto corporatized nature of AI development and services.

Investors in the project already include famous names from both inside and outside Blockchain, and the network itself is already used by over 50 companies including Cisco and Huawei, according to the company.

“...It’s hard to know what direction the evolution of AI is going to go. I think in the long term, which may just mean a few decades from now, AIs will have a much greater intelligence than human beings,” CEO Ben Goertzel told Cointelegraph in an interview last month.