The cost of running artificial intelligence hardware has opened an unexpected avenue for AI companies to reduce expenses while still allowing individuals to make money from their home technology, according to Titan Network.
The internet infrastructure company said its software aggregates unused computing resources and rents them as a “decentralized cloud” to AI companies, who pay less than if they bought capacity from large centralized providers.
Powering AI is big business. The software requires enormous computing resources, and data centers consume enormous amounts of energy to run machines and cool buildings. Lots of bitcoins mining companies have these setups and many, including MARA Holding (MARA) and Riot Platforms (RIOT), are adapting to meet growing demand. On Monday, Alphabet (GOOG) announced plans to raise a whopping $80 billion to put toward AI infrastructure.
“Two of the ten largest AI companies in the world are using our products to achieve 75% savings on their infrastructure,” said Konstantin Tkachuk, founder and chief strategy officer, in an interview at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris.
The company now has 4 million connected devices worldwide and counts Tencent, Alibaba and AI video platform Kling AI among its customers, Titan Network said. Around 1 million devices are online at any time.
Titan is not the first project to attempt to reduce costs by consolidating unused computing capacity into what is called a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) system. Unlike platforms like Aethir and Akash Network, which target spare cycles on institutional servers, Titan claims to have unique connections with private citizens.
“Titan broke the code that no one else has ever used before, enabling everyday people to make money through the emerging AI data infrastructure industry,” River Davis, creative director of Titan, told CoinDesk.
When large companies pay to use the network for data tasks such as web scraping, data collection or content delivery, Titan sends 80% of that business revenue directly to the people providing the devices and internet bandwidth, who have downloaded a browser plug-in or specialized software.
The project said it has already captured about 5% of the AI data market in Asia.
