Raising $30 million, take a quick look at io.net, the new AI computing star in the Solana ecosystem
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Raising $30 million, take a quick look at io.net, the new AI computing star in the Solana ecosystem
io.net is a decentralized GPU network designed to provide computing power for machine learning.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
The AI wave is sweeping across the globe, but it has also led to GPU shortages due to surging computational demands. Meanwhile, solutions combining Crypto and AI are making waves—projects like Akash Network and Ritual have performed exceptionally well. Just yesterday, a new entrant, io.net, secured $30 million in Series A funding led by Hack VC, with participation from Foresight Ventures, Multicoin Capital, Delphi Digital, Solana Labs, and others.
Recently, IO announced on Twitter that it has launched a points rewards program running through the end of April. Additionally, the IO token will be launched by the end of April.
What is io.net?
io.net is a decentralized GPU network designed to provide computing power for machine learning (ML). It aggregates over one million GPUs from independent data centers, cryptocurrency miners, and crypto projects such as Filecoin or Render to deliver computational capacity. The project was founded by Ahmad Shadid, who first conceived the idea in 2020 while building a GPU computing network for Dark Tick, a machine learning-based quantitative trading firm, aiming to reduce costs. The project later gained attention at the Austin Solana Hacker House.
How does io.net solve key challenges?
Before discussing its solution, let's examine the main challenges users and institutions face when accessing computing resources. First, limited availability: accessing hardware via cloud services like AWS, GCP, or Azure often takes weeks, and popular GPU models are frequently out of stock. Second, minimal choice: users have little flexibility regarding GPU hardware types, geographic locations, security levels, or latency. Third, high costs: acquiring premium GPUs is extremely expensive, with monthly expenses for training and inference reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars.
io.net addresses these issues by aggregating underutilized GPUs—such as those from independent data centers, crypto miners, and blockchain projects like Filecoin and Render—and integrating them into a Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN). This allows engineers to access vast computational power within the system. ML teams can build inference and model-serving workflows across distributed GPU networks, leveraging distributed computing libraries to orchestrate and batch training jobs, enabling parallelization across many devices using data and model parallelism.
Furthermore, io.net employs distributed computing libraries with advanced hyperparameter tuning to identify optimal results, optimize scheduling, and simplify search pattern definitions. It also integrates open-source reinforcement learning (RL) libraries capable of handling production-grade, highly distributed RL workloads through simple APIs.
What is io.net’s product suite?
According to the official website, io.net’s product suite consists of three main components: IO Cloud, IO Worker, and IO Explorer. IO Cloud enables deployment and management of on-demand decentralized GPU clusters. It seamlessly integrates with the IO-SDK, offering a comprehensive solution for scaling AI and Python applications.
IO Worker provides users with a full-featured, user-friendly interface to efficiently manage their supply operations via a web application. Features include user account management, monitoring of computing activities, real-time data display, temperature and power consumption tracking, installation assistance, wallet management, security measures, and profitability calculations.
IO Explorer offers users comprehensive statistics and visualizations of various aspects of the GPU cloud. By providing full visibility into network activity, key metrics, data points, and reward transactions, it enables users to easily monitor, analyze, and understand detailed data about the io.net network.
What are the utilities of the upcoming IO token?
As outlined on the official site, the IO token serves several purposes: incentivizing IO Workers, rewarding AI and ML teams for continuous network usage, balancing supply and demand, pricing computing units for IO Workers, and enabling community governance.
To avoid payment instability caused by IO token price volatility, io.net has developed a USD-pegged stablecoin called IOSD, where 1 IOSD always equals $1. IOSD can only be obtained by burning IO tokens. Additionally, io.net is considering certain mechanisms to enhance network functionality—for example, allowing IO Workers to increase their likelihood of being rented by staking native assets. In such cases, the more assets they stake, the higher their chance of selection. Moreover, AI engineers who stake native assets may gain priority access to high-demand GPUs.
Overview of IO Token Mechanism Design
The IO token primarily serves two groups: demand-side users and supply-side providers. On the demand side, each compute job is priced in USD. The network holds payments until job completion. Once node operators configure their reward shares in USD and tokens, all USD amounts are directly allocated to node operators, while the token portion is used to burn IO. Then, during that period, all IO tokens minted as compute rewards are distributed to users based on the USD value of their coupon tokens (computing points).
On the supply side, rewards consist of availability rewards and compute rewards. Compute rewards are given for jobs submitted to the network. Users can select time preferences—the duration (in hours) for which clusters are deployed—and receive cost estimates from io.net’s pricing oracle. Availability rewards are determined by the network submitting small test jobs randomly to evaluate which nodes operate regularly and are ready to accept jobs from demand-side users.
Notably, both supply-side and demand-side participants are subject to a reputation system that accumulates scores based on computational performance and network engagement, influencing eligibility for rewards and discounts.
In addition, io.net features an ecosystem growth mechanism encompassing staking, referral rewards, and network fees. IO token holders can choose to stake their IO tokens with node operators or users. Upon staking, stakers earn 1–3% of all rewards received by the participant. Users can also invite new participants to join the network and share a portion of the new participant’s future earnings. A 5% network fee is applied to transactions.
Potential Airdrop Acquisition Methods
The official team has not yet disclosed specific details about the airdrop distribution. However, it is speculated that allocations might go to active users within certain Solana ecosystem projects, such as RENDER or FIL token holders. Another method—with higher barriers—is operating a node, which requires specific personal computer configurations and setup knowledge. For detailed instructions, refer to the official documentation.
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