Hyperbolic’s blockchain-based cloud platform aims to make AI affordable to startups, researchers and builders squeezed by surging GPU prices.
Hyperbolic, one of the newer contenders in the race to apply blockchain tech to artificial intelligence, has raised $7 million in a seed funding round led by Polychain Capital and Lightspeed Faction.
The AI boom has strained the global supply chain for graphics processing units (GPUs) and other hardware used to train AI models. Surging hardware prices have squeezed all but the best-resourced AI outfits, making it difficult for startups and researchers to access AI alongside Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Google and Meta.
Hyperbolic’s blockchain-based cloud platform aims to make AI hardware affordable for a wider swath of builders.
“Currently, AI companies are reportedly spending over 80% of their capital on compute resources, without a cost-effective solution on the market, and causing an industry-wide bottleneck due to cost and distribution challenges,” Hyperbolic explained in a statement shared with CoinDesk. “Hyperbolic’s solution addresses this issue by creating a scalable system to aggregate global GPU compute and leveraging blockchain technology to ensure their network of nodes operates in a verifiable and secure manner.”
Hyperbolic’s first product will be an AI inference service that allows builders to use state-of-the-art AI models “at a fraction of the cost,” according to the company. (After an AI model is trained, it makes “inferences” based on user requests, such as when ChatGPT responds to user queries.)
In the long term, the firm plans to build a “GPU marketplace” that offers developers and researchers cheaper access to cloud computing hardware for training their own AI models.
The seed round included participation from Chapter One, LongHash, Bankless Ventures, Republic Digital, Nomad Capital, CoinSummer Labs and Third Earth Capital. It also included angel investors like Balaji Srinivasan, NEAR’s Illia Polosukhin and Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal.