ArkStream Capital: Why we invested in IO.Net

Author: ArkStream Capital

ArkStream Capital has recently successfully completed a Series A investment in IO.Net. This round of financing was led by Hack VC. With the participation of more than 20 well-known domestic VCs and angel investors, the total financing amount reached US$30 million. IO.Net is ArkStream Capital's important investment in the artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized infrastructure (DePIN) tracks, demonstrating our expectation that artificial intelligence will become the focus of innovation in this market cycle.

Why invest in IO.Net: Invest in the new oil in the AI ​​era, decentralize the mining of human computing power 

With the rapid development and widespread application of AI technology, the global demand for computing power is exploding, especially the demand for GPUs (graphics processing units). This growth in demand is both vertical, reflected in the fact that technology giants are rushing to buy Nvidia GPUs to hoard computing power in order to train large language models (LLM) with more parameters; it is also horizontal, with many AI startups and products trying to The technology is used in tens of millions of use cases such as recommendation systems, education, personal health, medical research, and supply chains. This huge demand for computing power makes GPU the "new oil" in the AI ​​era.

Image source: NetScribes, Ark Invest

IO.Net A unique solution 

In response to the global shortage of GPUs, IO.Net has proposed an innovative solution. By leveraging encryption technology to coordinate human collaboration across the globe, IO.Net is able to leverage humanity's untapped computing power on a massive scale. Known as the “Airbnb” of GPUs, it relies on the Solana blockchain to provide a decentralized and permissionless global collaboration, verification, and payment platform, sharing hardware such as data centers, encryption mines, gaming computers, and high-performance workstations. The originally idle GPU computing power in the cluster.

The advantages and impact of IO.Net 

IO.Net not only provides customers with low prices of 10-20% off compared to centralized cloud service providers and instant online services without permission, but also provides computing power providers with additional startup through the upcoming IO token. Incentive and jointly help achieve the goal of connecting 1 million GPUs. Compared with other DePIN computing projects, IO.Net focuses on GPU computing capabilities, and the scale of its GPU network is more than 100 times ahead of similar projects. In addition, IO.Net is also the first in the blockchain industry to integrate the most advanced ML technology stack (such as Ray cluster, Kubernetes cluster and giant cluster) into the GPU DePIN project and put it into large-scale practice, which makes it not only the number of GPUs , and is in a leading position in technology application and model training capabilities.

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

Future Outlook and Partners 

With the continuous development of IO.Net, its The engineering team will increase the GPU capacity of the network to 500,000 concurrent GPUs across the entire network to compete with centralized cloud service providers, thereby providing services similar to Web 2 at a lower cost. Through close partnerships with major DePIN and AI players, including Render Network, Filecoin, Solana, Ritual, and more, IO.Net is gradually establishing its core position in the field. We believe that IO.Net will become the leader and settlement layer of decentralized GPU networks in the medium to long term, bringing vitality to the entire Web 3xAI ecosystem.

Conclusion 

ArkStream Capital’s investment is not only The recognition of the future development potential of IO.Net is also a firm optimism for the future direction of AI, DePIN and broader technology fields. As an industry pioneer and supporter, ArkStream Capital will continue to provide computing infrastructure and ecological connection support for IO.Net, and jointly create a new era of AI and decentralized networks.

View the original English text of this announcement: https://x.com/ark_stream/status/1766494990862303553?s=20

Appendix: The complete list of IO.Net Series A investors includes

Hack VC, Multicoin, 6th Man Ventures, OKX Ventures, M13, Mo and Avery from Aptos, Aptos Labs, Toly from Solana, Matty Taylor, Ian Krotinsky, MH Ventures, Amber Group, Arkstream Capital, Modular Capital, Continue Capital, Foresight, Longhash, SevenX, Delphi Digital, Animoca Brands, Yat Siu, The Sandbox, Sebastian Borget from The Sandbox, Solana Ventures, Web3 Venture