Aethir’s decentralized Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) network started out as a solution for cloud gaming, but co-founder Mark Rydon says the company is now focused on artificial intelligence, an industry where growing demand for computing power is raising the value of the GPU and clashing with the US -Chinese geopolitics.
Founded in 2022, Aethir is one of the most talked about protocols in the decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) space due to its real-world utility.
DePIN protocols are networks where people collaborate to offer a service in exchange for a token.
In the last year, the space has become extremely popular, with CoinGecko giving DePIN coins a market capitalization of $33 billion. Hundreds of DePINs are appearing for every vertical imaginable, from flight tracking data to mapping.
Aethir is one of the leading projects in decentralized computing and demonstrates that AI can work with distributed computing as well as large centralized data centers.
Aethir’s Journey
GPUs were once the exclusive domain of gamers. Companies like Nvidia and AMD rushed to make their GPU chips more powerful so gamers could enjoy their virtual worlds with higher fidelity and resolution.
And then, around 2006, Nvidia researchers discovered that the parallel computing power of GPUs (which makes graphics better and better) was also good at processing massive amounts of data and could speed up computing workloads. traditional.
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But this was 2006 and verticals like AI weren’t on anyone’s radar. Nvidia continued to trade for less than $1.
Fast forward to today, and Nvidia is challenging Apple for the title of the most valuable company in the world. In recent years, GPUs have become the backbone of the AI revolution, powering everything from generative AI models to advanced machine learning algorithms.
Much like Nvidia and GPUs’ journey, Aethir began offering idle GPUs from data centers to bolster cloud gaming platforms before, as co-founder Mark Rydon explained in an interview with CoinDesk, and decided the real money was in. in AI.
“We started Aethir in a gaming context,” Rydon said. “But we quickly realized that the enterprise-grade GPU cloud we were building had enormous relevance to the AI industries. AI runtime customers will pay much more than gamers, and the demand for AI computing It’s just amazing.”
Incredible, by the way. TrendForce, a market research company, estimates the value of the AI server industry to be $205 billion, which is impressive since they estimate the value of servers, as a whole, to be little more than 300 billion dollars.
Aethir acts as a marketplace for GPU computing, offering idle GPUs to businesses that need on-demand capacity without the overhead of owning or maintaining their own hardware.
For researchers outside of prestigious institutions, this is huge. They can gain access to computing power, without the huge capital expenditure of purchasing their own infrastructure.
“This is the most expensive computing that has ever existed, and if you’re not efficient in managing that computing, it’s a huge drain on capital,” Rydon said during an interview on the sidelines of Devcon in Bangkok last November. “Our decentralized approach allows us to scale to regions… that need more computing but can least afford it.”
Know your customer, know your computer
Given Nvidia’s leadership in the AI space, Chinese researchers are eager to gain access to these ultra-powerful chips that are generations ahead of what is available domestically.
But geopolitics have gotten in the way. The US Department of Commerce prohibits the sale of Nvidia’s most advanced chips, such as the H100, to China to keep Beijing one step behind.
In August 2024, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese companies were circumventing US export controls by renting decentralized GPU computing power abroad using companies similar to Aethir.
“We don’t accept high performance computing [requests] from places like China. You can’t if you have H100,” Rydon said. “They’re not meant to be in China. “We are geofenced and we don’t allow that computer in.”
Despite all the push towards decentralization in Web3, Rydon explained that Aethir is not completely permissionless.
“This is necessary for $100 million worth of deals to happen,” Rydon said.
There needs to be a Web2 layer to track service agreements that define performance and reliability standards for enterprise customers, and Know Your Customer (KYC) processes, which verify participants’ identities to ensure regulatory compliance.
“I don’t think anyone knows how to build truly permissionless hardware networks,” he said. “The risk to your bottom line as a company is too high if someone can come and go as they please without penalty.”
