News linked to both this project and an event.
Framework Ventures co-founder Michael Anderson pointed out in his analysis that the core opportunity in the next stage of the crypto industry may no longer be limited to crypto assets themselves, but rather evolve into a financing infrastructure for capital-intensive industries such as artificial intelligence, robotics, and energy, with blockchain becoming the capital layer.Compared to the 2020–2021 cycle, which was centered on DeFi and crypto speculation, tokenization and stablecoins are evolving from crypto-native applications into financial infrastructure serving the real economy. They can be used to provide more efficient financing channels for assets such as GPU computing power and energy projects. Currently, over $300 billion in stablecoin liquidity on-chain offers new funding sources for asset-backed lending, potentially allowing assets that were traditionally difficult to securitize—such as servers and computing hardware—to be packaged as financeable assets. (CoinDesk)
cloud computing startup Runpod has announced the completion of a $100 million funding round and stated it has rejected multiple acquisition offers. Specific investor information has not yet been disclosed. The company focuses on providing GPU computing power rental services for developers, supporting open-source models and AI application deployment. Currently, this sector generally relies on NVIDIA GPU servers for computing resources. As AI applications expand, market demand for low-cost, highly flexible computing infrastructure continues to rise, driving up both the valuations and funding activity of cloud service providers like Runpod. (The Information)
Bitcoin mining company HIVE's subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing has signed a three-year sovereign AI cloud infrastructure contract worth approximately $220 million with Bell AI Fabric and Cohere. Under the contract, BUZZ HPC will deploy a cluster containing 2,304 Nvidia Grace Blackwell GPUs at Bell's facility in Merritt, British Columbia.Funding for the Blackwell systems comes from the $115 million convertible note financing completed in April. The deployment is expected to become operational between late 2026 and early 2027, and is projected to add approximately $70 million to the company's current $35 million in annual recurring revenue. Additionally, HIVE has received approval to acquire a 32-megawatt data center in Big Boden, Sweden, and plans to upgrade it to support enterprise-grade AI workloads. (The Block)
Bitcoin mining company HIVE Digital announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, BUZZ High Performance Computing (BUZZ HPC), has entered into a sovereign AI infrastructure partnership with Bell Canada and Cohere. The collaboration will integrate Bell AI Fabric’s data center and network infrastructure, Cohere’s large language models and enterprise-grade AI capabilities, and BUZZ HPC’s computing platform—built on NVIDIA-accelerated GPU cloud and AI factory technologies. BUZZ HPC disclosed that it has signed a three-year GPU cloud contract valued at up to $220 million and will procure GB200 NVL72 rack-scale systems comprising 2,304 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GPUs. This AI cluster will provide compute power for Cohere’s foundational models and enterprise AI applications.
BTTInferGrid has officially launched, ushering in a new era for the decentralized AI (DeAI) sector within the ecosystem. As a major ecosystem upgrade to the existing BTFS service, this platform aims to break down traditional computational barriers by implementing a trustless multi-validator consensus mechanism to ensure robust computational integrity. It uses the $BTT token as the ecosystem’s unified incentive and settlement base, seamlessly and efficiently connecting idle GPU resources with AI developers worldwide. Within this network architecture, BTTInferGrid delivers highly cost-effective, elastic, on-demand computing services for AI inference—lowering the barriers to large-model inference and deployment—while simultaneously empowering global hardware nodes. On the supply side, participants can easily convert their idle GPUs into high-value revenue through a transparent, performance-weighted reward mechanism. Leveraging a powerful cryptographic-economic consensus, BTTInferGrid is spearheading a new paradigm shift toward decentralized AI infrastructure.
Hydra Host, a data center software startup and AI server intermediary platform, has completed a $100 million funding round at a post-money valuation of nearly $800 million. The round was led by Kindred Ventures. Other investors include Nvidia, ARK Invest, Magnetar Capital (an early investor in CoreWeave), and existing shareholders Founders Fund and Flume Ventures.Founded in 2021, Hydra Host initially served cryptocurrency miners but has since pivoted to providing automation software for data center operators. This software enables them to rent out idle Nvidia AI server computing power and operate a GPU matching marketplace connecting GPU holders with renters. The company has now deployed its technology across 50 data centers globally, expanding from 30 in February of this year. (The Information)
Sharon AI Holdings, a Nasdaq-listed company, announced a six-year strategic computing cooperation agreement with NVIDIA to jointly expand AI infrastructure capabilities in Australia.Under the agreement, the two parties will collaborate to build approximately 72MW of data center computing capacity and deploy infrastructure based on the NVIDIA DSX AI Factory architecture. The plan is to gradually scale up to 40,000 Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs to meet the computing needs of AI startups, enterprise clients, and research institutions.The cooperation model adopts a structure combining revenue generation with credit support: Sharon AI will be responsible for selling cloud services based on NVIDIA's computing power, while NVIDIA, upon receiving hardware and basic product revenue, will also participate in a share of cloud service revenue, forming a sustainable "usage-driven revenue model."Sharon AI stated that this collaboration will significantly enhance its capital efficiency, enabling it to expand AI infrastructure capabilities without relying on traditional heavy-asset financing and accelerate the deployment of "sovereign AI computing power" in Australia. With this partnership, Sharon AI's total AI factory capacity will increase to 132MW, of which approximately 102MW is already contracted by clients. The company expects to deploy over 55,000 NVIDIA GPUs by mid-2027. (Businesswire)
sources say NVIDIA has begun pitching its first independent central processing unit (CPU) product, Vera, to Chinese clients. Designed specifically for Agentic AI systems, the chip has entered mass production, marking NVIDIA's attempt to further expand its presence in the Chinese market with a CPU offering.According to sources, some Chinese clients have already shown interest in Vera. One major Chinese cloud computing company plans to procure over 300 servers equipped with dual Vera CPUs for testing, and will decide whether to expand procurement after the tests are completed.Built on the Arm Holdings architecture, Vera is NVIDIA's first independent CPU product. NVIDIA has previously stated that Vera's performance in AI agent-related computing tasks is 1.8 times that of comparable competitor products, and expects the product to contribute approximately $20 billion in revenue by the end of this fiscal year (ending January next year).The report notes that as the AI industry's focus gradually shifts from model training to inference computing, CPUs and custom chips are gaining more attention. Vera also positions NVIDIA to directly compete with Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), which have long dominated the server CPU market.Sources indicate that due to strict U.S. export restrictions on high-end GPUs, CPUs face relatively smaller regulatory hurdles in the Chinese market compared to GPU products. Currently, some Chinese clients plan to first deploy Vera chips for testing in overseas data centers. Meanwhile, software ecosystem compatibility and existing domestic AI chip deployment frameworks may still impact the subsequent large-scale adoption of Vera. (Reuters)
MNX, a decentralized futures exchange focused on the AI economy, has completed a $6.4 million funding round with participation from Village Global, Cambrian, Relay Digital, North Island Ventures, and others. MNX aims to build AI-native derivatives infrastructure, covering futures on GPU rental prices and data center electricity costs, valuation markets for private labs such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek, AI benchmarks and financial forecasting markets, as well as perpetual contracts for AI-related global equities. The platform supports leverage, portfolio margin, and batch auction for fair execution. Settlements are conducted in a fully non-custodial manner on MegaETH, with the mainnet scheduled to launch this summer.
According to Tech Funding News, AMD CEO Lisa Su announced at London Tech Week that the company will invest up to £2 billion in UK AI infrastructure over the next five years, covering national supercomputing infrastructure development and university research collaborations. Meanwhile, AMD is partnering with Oriole Networks—a startup spun out from University College London (UCL)—to deploy the world’s first large-scale, all-photonic network AI system under the UK government’s £50 million ARIA Inference Scaling Lab initiative. This system integrates Oriole’s PRISM photonic networking platform with AMD Instinct GPUs and EPYC CPUs; by completely eliminating electronic switches from the network core, it reduces core network energy consumption by 81% and cuts GPU idle time from 60% to under 1%.
: AI infrastructure startup Nscale has disclosed a total of nearly $4 billion in funding. After its latest $2 billion Series C round, the company's valuation reached $14.6 billion. Nscale, formerly a spin-off from cryptocurrency mining company Arkon Energy, now focuses on building and operating AI data centers and leasing computing resources to enterprises. Its investors include tech giants such as Nvidia, Dell, and Nokia. Since 2026, Nscale has also secured $1.4 billion in GPU-backed loans and $790 million in credit facilities to support its AI infrastructure expansion plans.Nscale has previously participated in OpenAI's "Stargate" infrastructure project, deploying AI computing facilities in the UK and Norway. However, following adjustments to OpenAI's related plans, some projects have been taken over by Microsoft and Google. (Fortune)
According to official announcements, Aethir—a decentralized GPU cloud computing infrastructure platform—has officially launched Aethir Mesh, an in-house open-source large language model (LLM) API platform built atop Aethir’s decentralized GPU infrastructure. The platform is now live and offers a unified API endpoint for direct access to leading open-source models, including DeepSeek V4, Kimi K2.6, GLM-5.1, MiniMax-M2.5, and Qwen3.6-27B.
According to Businesswire, Nasdaq-listed digital asset treasury company Datavault AI announced that it has signed a non-binding financing agreement to complete a $2 billion structured financing in four tranches. The counterparty will subscribe to newly issued shares of Datavault AI at a price per share ranging from $1.55 to $2.00, backed by collateral financing from Datavault AI’s digital asset exchange and RWA tokenization business. The new funds are intended to expand Datavault AI’s SanQtum GPU edge computing network, support platform development, and repay existing debt.
prediction market platform Polymarket has disclosed the completion of its first institutional on-chain block trade. The six-figure USD transaction was executed on the Polygon blockchain by digital asset broker FalconX and AI risk settlement infrastructure startup Anera Labs, targeting contracts related to the Ornn Compute Price Index, which tracks the rental price of NVIDIA H100 GPU chips. Polymarket stated that this is the first institutional on-chain block trade in the prediction market field. Going forward, FalconX will also serve as the exclusive market maker for block trades on the Polymarket platform to support institutional clients' liquidity needs and price discovery. (CNBC)
Odaily reports: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced at the GTC conference in Taipei that the company has selected China's Unitree as its first humanoid robot AI platform partner for universities and research institutions. Together, they will launch the Isaac GR00T reference design, accelerating the arrival of the "Physical AI" era.The platform deeply integrates Unitree's H2 humanoid robot (approximately 1.8 meters tall, weighing 68 kg) with Nvidia's Jetson Thor computing platform, Blackwell GPU, Isaac GR00T model, and simulation software. It is also equipped with Singapore-based Sharpa's dexterous hand. The platform is open to top global research institutions, with the first batch including Stanford, ETH Zurich, UCSD, and Ai2. Jensen Huang emphasized that this initiative aims to lower the barrier to entry for humanoid robot development by providing an out-of-the-box, full-stack development environment. He believes that "Physical AI" will be the next wave following generative AI, with a long-term market size potentially reaching tens of trillions of dollars.The upgraded version, the H2 Plus, is expected to be available and open for general sale in October 2026. Notably, Unitree is planning an IPO on the Shanghai Stock Exchange's Sci-Tech Innovation Board (STAR Market), aiming to raise 4.2 billion yuan. Over 40% of its revenue comes from overseas, highlighting its significant global presence. (Techstartups)
Bitcoin mining company IREN announced the completion of a $3.65 billion investment-grade GPU financing to support its AI cloud contract signed with Microsoft. The financing includes $2.1 billion in US private placement bonds and $1.55 billion in delayed-draw term loans, with a blended debt cost of 6.00%. It is reported that this financing has been assigned ratings of A and A (low) by Fitch and DBRS, respectively, making it the highest-rated investment-grade GPU financing project publicly disclosed to date, as well as the first GPU financing case in the US private market. IREN stated that the financing is secured by GPU assets and related contract cash flows, which helps optimize its capital structure and supports the company's plan to expand its AI Cloud capacity to 480MW by the end of 2026.
: Axe Compute (NASDAQ: AGPU) has announced that the underlying infrastructure provider for its $260 million enterprise-level contract is Aethir, a globally distributed GPU infrastructure network. It is reported that Axe Compute has confirmed receipt of the first payment of $43 million under this contract. Aethir has officially initiated the compute delivery process for the corresponding cluster of 2,304 NVIDIA B300 GPUs, with a target go-live date set for the third quarter of 2026.The contract adopts a 36-month take-or-pay structure, and is expected to generate approximately $21 million in revenue per quarter after going live.
Bitcoin mining company HIVE Digital Technologies has acquired land in the Toronto area for $58 million, planning to build an industrial-scale AI computing center through its subsidiary BUZZ High Performance Computing. Once fully operational, the facility is expected to support approximately 320 MW of capacity and over 100,000 GPUs—potentially making it one of Canada’s largest computing “super-factories.” Following the announcement, HIVE’s stock surged nearly 45%. Just two weeks earlier, HIVE had raised $115 million to expand its global data center footprint and GPU capacity.
: Datavault AI has released its first-quarter 2026 business update, disclosing that the company has signed tokenization contracts worth over $800 million. Of this, approximately $100 million in fees are expected to be recognized in 2026, achieving about $75 million in new contract value in the first quarter, further validating institutional demand for its Real World Asset (RWA) tokenization platform.In terms of assets and financing, the company has strengthened its balance sheet through a $60 million private placement and an additional $120 million in non-dilutive financing. It is also advancing the expansion of the SanQtum AI infrastructure platform across the United States, with plans to expand its quantum-safe GPU edge network by the end of 2026 and deploy approximately 48,000 GPUs. (Businesswire)
Aethir Claw has officially launched its Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) layer, integrating API credits for cutting-edge large models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and others directly into a single platform subscription. Users no longer need to individually register with external LLM providers or manage API keys; one payment covers the entire stack from VPS hosting to model inference.Going forward, Aethir Claw plans to deploy mainstream models on Aethir’s own GPU network, achieving true data sovereignty at the inference layer.Aethir is a leading platform in decentralized GPU cloud computing infrastructure. To date, the network has deployed over 430,000 GPU containers across more than 200 nodes in 94 countries globally, accumulated nearly 1.8 billion hours of computing time, and served over 150 partners and enterprise clients. Its GPU hardware spans the NVIDIA Hopper and Blackwell generations, including the H100, H200, B200, and B300.