Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
As the penetration rate of AI gradually increases, the intersection of the crypto industry and AI is also welcoming more and more projects. Previously, AI Agents led the crypto market with a growth rate of 24.31%. The flourishing of various AI projects, AI Agents, and AI Meme coins has made GPU computing power and cloud computing resources increasingly scarce. As a leading enterprise-level decentralized cloud computing platform in the industry, Aethir has taken the initiative and demonstrated strong development momentum, with a $100 million ecosystem fund highlighting its determination to focus on the AI track and create a "AWS" (Amazon Web Services) in the Web3 field.
Odaily Planet Daily will use six questions in this article to glimpse Aethir's landscape in the AI industry. (Note: The questions are posed by Odaily Planet Daily reporter Wenser, and the respondent is Aethir co-founder Mark)
Q1: As an enterprise-level decentralized cloud computing platform, Aethir previously launched an ecosystem fund of up to $100 million, with the first batch of funded projects focusing on the AI track. What is the current progress of this batch of projects? What are the funding criteria?
A: In October last year, Aethir announced an ecosystem fund of up to $100 million composed of multiple funding programs. As an enterprise-level decentralized GPU cloud computing infrastructure platform focused on AI and Gaming, Aethir has been committed to accelerating the widespread application of the cloud computing platform since the TGE, empowering startups in the AI and gaming fields. The core funding program, Aethir Catalyst, has a scale of up to $20 million and will distribute 336 million ATH tokens by 2025 to provide financial and ecological computing power support for over 100 projects in the form of funding or subsidies, offering them key computing resources such as GPUs needed for project development.
At the time of the announcement in November, the news about AethirCloud's $100 million ecosystem fund seeking AI agent projects received over 300 applications within 24 hours. Recently, our Batch 5 (fifth batch of projects) has also been released, and everyone can take a look. Many AI-related applications from previous batches have also gained market recognition, and TopHat was launched on Binance Alpha on January 7. As for the criteria for screening projects, we aim to promote the landing and application of AI-related applications in the industry as much as possible.
The other two ecosystem funding programs, each with a scale of $10 million, are also key components of the Aethir ecosystem fund and will collaborate with XAI and XPLA to promote innovative development. At the Bitcoin MENA conference, we also partnered with ADBC (Abu Dhabi Blockchain Center) to plan to empower more Web3 projects, and the application page has officially launched; in addition, we sponsored the Solana AI hackathon AI Agents x MEMEs track. Furthermore, for companies needing GPU computing resources, Aethir offers a subsidy program with discounts of up to 35% on off-platform service costs, making it easier for startups or experienced developers to access computing resources through the Aethir platform and promote innovative project development. Aethir will take swift action to embrace AI Agents and AI Memes, helping to expand and implement AI-related applications.
Currently, the funding amount for a single project ranges from $5,000 to $500,000 worth of ATH tokens; it is divided into tracks such as gaming, launch platforms, AI integration enterprises, and cloud gaming platforms. Eligible companies can receive both funding and subsidies simultaneously, which is quite friendly for many projects. (Note: Contracts of 6 months or more are eligible for subsidies. Shorter contracts may qualify for grants but not for subsidies unless approved by the trading department. The $100 million ecosystem fund plan will be differentiated by phases and cooperation sectors.)
Q2: Compared to traditional cloud service providers, cloud computing platforms, and other similar Web3 projects, what advantages, characteristics, or competitive differences does Aethir have? Is its ecological position in the mid-to-upper industry or elsewhere?
A: In comparison to other DePIN projects, Aethir's advantages are:
From the perspective of project business, Aethir has already built and served enterprise-level clients with high computing power demands before entering Web3, which has generated stable and continuously growing positive revenue for Aethir. Enterprise-level services need to comply with SLA (Service Level Agreement) protocols in physical industries. It is not an exaggeration to say that Aethir is currently the only Depin project in Web3 that can provide stable services for enterprise-level clients. We are also the only company that can implement cloud gaming and cloud mobile through web3 virtual machine technology, with four business segments in a rapid development state.
In 2024, our annual recurring revenue has reached $90.68 million, as shown in our GPU Dashboard (with December revenue reaching $7.6 million and computing hours exceeding 266 million hours). The existing mature large-scale clients and stable growing market demand are the biggest differences between Aethir and other DePIN projects.
In terms of business, Aethir does very different things compared to other Depin projects. Io.net mainly aggregates underutilized distributed GPU resources through a high-level coordination layer to solve some simple AI or machine learning tasks, Render provides 3D rendering services for consumer-level computing connections; or Grass uses idle network resources to mine points for tokens. For us, we focus on software layers for enterprise-level service use cases, including gaming and AI directions, so Aethir's competitive advantage is very clear in the areas we focus on.
From the perspective of ecological scalability, Aethir's ecological position lays a strong foundation for its scalability, establishing deep ecological connections with many projects across different fields, and enriching the use cases of the $ATH token. Aethir's ecosystem aligns with industry development.
Aethir plays a significant role in the supply-demand market because it helps users utilize computing power at a low cost through an optimized computing power network while ignoring the physical space and actual market computing costs. In simpler terms, Aethir can help users obtain high-quality computing resources at a low cost, which can reduce the development or training costs for users; on the other hand, its flexible computing power allocation and market demand can meet the needs of various users. Aethir has been expanding its ecological partners, and I believe there is much to explore from the perspective of computing power. To keep it brief, the future expansion and breaking of decentralized AI is unstoppable, and as a computing power supplier, the increasing breaking of AI applications will be the best proof of our strength.
Q3: Since Aethir's launch, there have been many collaborations with other projects and optimizations on the business side. Does it have a certain scale effect?
A: Undoubtedly, whether before or after the TGE, our team has been actively expanding Aethir's ecological landscape. I have mentioned this in some of my previous speeches at events.
In the new era, the demand for GPUs has surged, and with the complexity of AI large language models skyrocketing, issues such as insufficient purchasing power, slow product updates, and inefficiency have gradually become prominent. A decentralized, enterprise-level GPU cloud infrastructure that can adapt to the needs of the AI and gaming industries is an effective solution to these problems, and Aethir's product services are one of the best choices to meet this demand. For example, in the gaming direction, Aethir's cloud gaming service can make scaling cheaper, cloudifying the hardware layer, allowing casual players to play all games on various devices. Additionally, the DePIN hardware device Aethir Edge we released has already sold over 25,000 units, allowing users to use the device to run the Aethir network to earn tokens or "mine" other projects, demonstrating significant ecological scalability effects. Aethir's core competitiveness lies in its decentralized computing infrastructure and edge computing capabilities, which can leverage the growth trends of decentralized CDN and GPU to expand its business scope.
For example, currently, the prices on our platform are about 1/10 of AWS's prices. Compared to other low-frequency platforms, our prices may be slightly higher because our computing resources are enterprise-level, and most of our clients are also enterprise clients. However, compared to Google Cloud and AWS, their GPU charges are still very expensive. By allowing retailers to participate, we can gradually but powerfully cover more and more businesses, not just in the crypto field but also in the AI field. This is also our expected goal. Our revenue and platform scale will also grow larger over time.
At the same time, the breakout effect of AI Agents has already been recognized by the market. Aethir has also reached deep support and ecological expansion with AI16Z based on the ELIZA framework. It is believed that the narrative of AI Agent applications and the expansion of the entire industry are moving towards AI content. I believe the industry's future will revolve around breakthroughs in decentralized CDN and high-growth applications of GPUs. As the demand for GPU-supported large model training, inference, and game rendering peaks in 2024, decentralized CDN will experience explosive growth in 2025, serving latency-sensitive scenarios such as content streaming, data scraping, and AR/VR experiences. Aethir has a complete computing power network and can become a core infrastructure supporter in this market by providing high-performance, low-cost decentralized computing and edge computing capabilities. At the same time, by integrating energy optimization and resource consolidation technologies, it aims to address the current challenges of fragmented supply and inject greater innovative momentum into high-growth use cases.
Q4: Aethir has partnered with LayerZero to expand its cross-chain ecological landscape. What are the future plans?
A: In November last year, Aethir publicly announced the partnership news, which arose from the cross-chain multifunctionality needs generated by the expansion of GPU cloud infrastructure. We are collaborating with the cross-chain solution LayerZero to create a multi-chain AI and gaming ecosystem, bringing multi-chain functionality into the Aethir DePIN stack, which will also help Aethir migrate to the Sophon ZK chain.
In our collaboration, LayerZero's cross-chain technology will ensure the smooth transition of ATH token rewards for checking nodes and Aethir Edge operators from the Arbitrum L2 network to Sophon, while maintaining network stability and ensuring a frictionless experience for the Aethir community. Moving forward, we will also utilize the Stargate cross-chain liquidity protocol to facilitate seamless cross-chain exchanges of ATH tokens for users.
In terms of node migration, token rewards, and liquidity transfer, LayerZero provides support for our multi-chain development; we, in turn, provide GPU computing power support for more AI and gaming projects on various chains. Thus, the addition of partners like LayerZero and Sophon can help Aethir build a "large ecosystem for cross-chain assets," further elevating the industry's imaginative ceiling.
Additionally, Aethir is actively pursuing deep collaborations with other partners. For example, we recently partnered with Eigen Layer, a leader in the ReStaking track, to help Web3-background-less listed or enterprise-level companies buy tokens on their balance sheets, stake them, or hold these tokens for extended periods. Through our mechanism, we can offer them a very compliant and secure way to provide computing power on our platform.
The first to tokenize GPU is GAIB, transforming enterprise-level GPUs into tradable, income-generating assets; collaborating with MetaStreet for the first node liquidity yield; the first DePIN on Sui, SuiDePIN, has also reached cooperation, and we have jointly established the AI computing project Tactical Compute (TACOM) with partners Beam Foundation (through its wholly-owned subsidiary Beam Investments), Sophon Foundation, and Permian Labs, aiming to raise $40 million. The plan is to combine traditional computing economics with tokenization and distributed solutions using decentralized technology to meet the surging global demand for scalable computing infrastructure. The previous collaboration with ADBC was a proactive layout in the Middle East.
In addition to the collaborations mentioned above, the development of a cross-chain ecosystem is also part of our plans. Therefore, the previous partnership with LayerZero was undoubtedly to ensure Aethir could expand towards a cross-chain ecosystem, while the collaboration with Eigen Layer is to ensure the platform has quality GPU suppliers while continuously expanding the utilization of ATH tokens.
Q5: From the perspective of industry tracks, how do you view DeAI projects and AI Agent token issuance projects? Do you think this is an industry trend?
A: Undoubtedly, as a leading decentralized computing power network in the industry, Aethir has a natural complementary space for cooperation with DeAI projects and AI Agents, including DeFAI, GamFAI, DeSci, etc., which are all results and directions of AI flourishing in various fields.
We can provide stable and sufficient computing power resources for the latter, facilitating project operations and long-term development; in return, they can provide us with stable revenue while enriching ecological development and improving network utilization efficiency.
With capital institutions like a16z and DWF joining DeAI and AI Agent token issuance projects, the AI track has become an industry-recognized hot sector. As a representative figure in the Crypto x AI Agent track, the founder of ai16z, Shaw, previously announced our collaboration, stating that the decentralized computing network @AethirCloud is providing free GPU computing power for Eliza agents. Developers with related needs can apply. This shows the technical recognition and support for Aethir's computing power supply. This is also the original intention behind our initiation of the $100 million ecosystem fund. As a leading decentralized computing power network in the industry, Aethir must engage in this AI wave represented by AI Agents.
Q6: Currently, the application fields of AI are expanding rapidly, especially in AI healthcare, AI education, AI entertainment, and other areas where there is a surge of demand and startups. Does Aethir have any relevant support plans or cooperation tendencies in the future?
A: As early as August this year, we released a roadmap for the next six months, and since then, we have been steadily advancing these plans. Through these business promotions and growth, we hope to achieve efficient business integration and enhance AI capabilities, while introducing governance mechanisms and ecological funds.
In our roadmap, we have also detailed the functions designed for enterprises to settle on the Aethir platform, facilitating the conversion of enterprise revenue into ATH. Future enterprise service expansions include cloud gaming, cloud mobile, AI training, and edge computing. We also plan to introduce special features to enhance user experience.
In 2025, Aethir's key narrative will revolve around breakthroughs in decentralized CDN and high-growth applications of GPUs. As the demand for GPU-supported large model training, inference, and game rendering peaks in 2024, decentralized CDN will experience explosive growth in 2025, serving latency-sensitive scenarios such as content streaming, data scraping, and AR/VR experiences. Aethir can become a core infrastructure supporter in this market by providing high-performance, low-cost decentralized computing and edge computing capabilities, while also addressing the current challenges of fragmented supply through energy optimization and resource consolidation technologies, injecting greater innovative momentum into high-growth use cases. Concepts like DeFAI and DeSci's AI Agents are also emerging in the market and are viewed positively, but I believe AI Agents are still in a chaotic phase. Let us move towards the direction where true AI Agents appear and are widely recognized and used by users. In addition, we will also collaborate on some developer-focused projects, especially supporting young developers, particularly in the AI field. We aim to support these diverse developers by providing free computing power through our platform's infrastructure. We have actually supported many favored Web3 projects, and their development in the first three months received our strong backing. Generally, our sponsorship period lasts 3 to 6 months to support their initial launch and help their Agents truly play a role and create value. This is also an important strategic direction for Aethir to achieve market expansion and enhance ecological influence in 2025.
_Reference materials:
_Aethir Official Documentation
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