ArkStream Capital: Why We Invested in IO.Net

ArkStream Capital recently completed a Series A investment in IO.Net, with leading investment from Hack VC and participation from over 20 renowned VC firms and angel investors from both domestic and overseas markets, totalling $30 million. IO.Net represents a significant investment for ArkStream Capital in the fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and decentralized physical infrastructure networks (DePIN), showcasing our anticipation of AI becoming a focal point of innovation in this market cycle.

Why Invest in IO.Net: Investing in the New Oil of the AI Era, Decentralized Harnessing of Human Computing Power

With the rapid advancement and widespread application of AI technology, there is an explosive growth in global demand for computing power, particularly GPUs (Graphics Processing Units). This demand is both vertical, reflected in the rush of tech giants to acquire Nvidia GPUs to train large language models (LLMs) with more parameters, and horizontal, with numerous AI startups and products attempting to apply the technology to a myriad of use cases such as recommendation systems, education, personal health, medical research, and supply chains. This immense demand for computing power has turned GPUs into the “new oil” of the AI era.

Image sources: NetScribes, Ark Invest

IO.Net’s Unique Solution

In response to the global shortage of GPUs, IO.Net has proposed an innovative solution. By leveraging cryptographic technology to coordinate human cooperation globally, IO.Net can harness unused computing power on a large scale. Dubbed the “Airbnb” for GPUs, it relies on the Solana blockchain to provide a decentralized and permissionless platform for global collaboration, validation, and payment, sharing the idle GPU computing power in hardware clusters such as data centers, crypto mining farms, gaming computers, and high-performance workstations.

Advantages and Impact of IO.Net

IO.Net not only offers customers instant online services at 1-2% of the cost compared to centralized cloud service providers but also provides additional startup incentives for computing power providers through the upcoming IO token, helping to achieve the goal of connecting 1 million GPUs. Compared to other DePIN computing projects, IO.Net focuses on GPU computing power, and its GPU network scale is already over 100 times larger than similar projects. Additionally, IO.Net is the first project in the blockchain space to integrate state-of-the-art ML technology stacks (such as Ray clusters, Kubernetes clusters, and giant clusters) into GPU DePIN projects and put them into large-scale practice, positioning itself not only in terms of GPU quantity but also in technological application and model training capabilities.

Image sources: ArkStream Research; Data sources: io.net, depinhub.io, stats.akash.network

Future Outlook and Partnerships

As IO.Net continues to evolve, its engineering team aims to scale the network’s GPU capacity to compete with centralized cloud service providers, reaching 500,000 concurrent GPUs across the network, thereby providing services similar to Web 2 at lower costs. Through close collaborations with major DePIN and AI players, including Render Network, Filecoin, Solana, and Ritual, among others, IO.Net is gradually establishing its core position in the field. We believe that IO.Net will emerge as a leader and settlement layer in the decentralized GPU network in the medium to long term, bringing vitality to the entire Web 3 x AI ecosystem.

Conclusion

ArkStream Capital’s investment not only acknowledges the future potential of IO.Net but also demonstrates strong confidence in the future direction of AI, DePIN, and the broader technology landscape. As pioneers and supporters in the industry, ArkStream Capital will continue to provide support for IO.Net’s computing infrastructure and ecosystem connectivity, collectively ushering in a new era of AI and decentralized networks. For the original announcement in English, please visit: https://x.com/ark_stream/status/1766494990862303553?s=20

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