All that aside, distributed AI compute has a credibility problem to overcome. A research preprint from June claimed that Pearl, a blockchain marketed as converting cryptocurrency mining into AI work, ran the equivalent of 320,000 RTX 3090-class GPUs on random matrix math while producing no useful AI computation. Far Labs and Evolving Edge route real customer inference jobs rather than token rewards, which puts them a step ahead of that model, but their cost and latency figures are unsubstantiated claims until, and if, the networks operate at scale.
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Luke James Social Links Navigation Contributor Luke James is a freelance writer and journalist. Although his background is in legal, he has a personal interest in all things tech, especially hardware and microelectronics, and anything regulatory.
warezme How is it if it costs $40 to $50 per month in electricity and you are getting .02 per hour anywhere near minimum wage? Seems like they aren't getting any hosts if you would just be giving your machine up mostly at a loss of not only your resources but your time since you wouldn't even be able to use your machine for gaming if the only possible way to make a profit was to run 24hrs. Nope Reply
bill001g These startups must have hired the underpants gnomes as consultants. Currently the big AI companies are having issues not being able to recover the electrical costs of the AI models they are selling. They are losing even more for costs related to building the data center and buying all the machines. There is no way these startups can think to cover the cost of the consumer electricity. That might be the real scam though. They try to get stupid people who think their pc runs for free and pay them a couple pennies a hour. They take all the money they can get before people figure it out. There are massive numbers of stupid people. So many people think door dash is free extra money because they have no clue how to calculate the costs of using their car to do these deliveries. Reply
Duarteribeirinho The service already exists Vast.ai the issue for me is data access. If they can run an AI workload in my local machine, they can potentially access other stuff that are from my pc. Whether its the client or the company, someone will have access to my stuff and that is a big no-no. Reply
Trake_17 Novel, but it's a full throated "Nah" for me, Dog. There are so many reasons, but firstly, I just don't want to risk having to buy a new GPU within the next 2 years. Maybe after 5 the market will be reasonable again. If they're going to buy a portion of your GPU life, they should pay a premium like most markets that buy small packages of stuff. Otherwise no one will bite. Then they have to resolve the 100 other reasons no one wants this, just like Airbnb had to. Reply
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/gpus/startups-pitch-an-airbnb-for-ai-inference-that-pays-gamers-for-their-idle-pcs#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.