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Humayun Sheikh
Humayun Sheikh is the CEO and Co-founder of Fetch.ai, an open-source and permissionless network leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to create a decentralized machine-learning system that can execute tasks on the blockchain. In August 2017, Sheikh co-founded Fetch.ai with Toby Simpson and Thomas Hain.[1][2]
Education
Humayun Sheikh attended NED University of Engineering and Technology where he received a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering from 1991-1995.[2]
From 2003-2004, Humayun attended the Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship Centre for a Business Administration and Management course.[2]
Career
Humayun Sheikh was the Chairman of Mettalis Group, a UK Commodities trading company from 2013-2017.[2]
In August 2014, he founded itzMe, a Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence company, and served as the CEO until December 2017. In June 2020, he founded Mettalex, a financial-services venture enabling cross-chain decentralized-finance trading through a peer-to-peer order book and AI-agent execution, and served as its CEO until June 2022.[2] Humayun was a founding investor in DeepMind where he supported commercialization for early-stage AI & deep neural network technology.[2][3]
Fetch.ai
In August 2017, Humayun Sheikh co-founded Fetch.ai, the artificial intelligence lab developing the Fetch.ai platform alongside Toby Simpson and Thomas Hain. Fetch.ai network is an open-access decentralized machine learning blockchain-based network created to enable the development and growth of the digital economy without human interference. The network connects devices and services to the Internet of Things (IoT) and also facilitates the involvement of other agents, such as people.[1][2]
The Binance Launchpad IEO (Initial Exchange Offering) and token sale for Fetch.ai began on February 25, 2019.[10] In February 2019, the Fetch.AI (FET) token sale on the crypto exchange Binance’s Launchpad reached its hard cap of $6 million dollars with the sale of over 69 million tokens. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao reported in a tweet published the same day that the sale had been completed within a "dizzying 22 seconds".[7] The Fetch.ai mainnet went live on December 19, 2019.[4][11]
"I have this passion for taking all these machine learning models, which are going to be the gold, and commercializing them so that everybody can have a participation in it. That was kind of the start of the Fetch journey, and we haven't looked back since then." - Humayun said in an interview with Cryptonews.[5]
According to Humayun, the Fetch.ai technology targets various sectors, including those with a decentralized marketplace for service providers such as plumbers and electricians, promising increased efficiency and accessibility for small businesses.[6]
"Our objective is to create tools which can enable business cases to be developed and deployed in a decentralized manner and the ability to use ML/AI which can progressively be decentralized" - Humayun posted in an explanatory X thread[8]
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance
On March 27, 2024, Fetch.ai announced that it was forming the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance with SingularityNET and Ocean Protocol. Sheikh was named chairman of the Alliance while continuing as Fetch.ai’s CEO. The organizations remained separate legal entities, with their teams, leadership, and treasuries unchanged.[9]
On February 25, 2025, Fetch.ai announced ASI-1 Mini, a Web3-native large language model designed for complex agentic workflows. Sheikh described it as the first major product from the Alliance’s innovation stack.[12]
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