ArkStream Capital: Why We Invested in IO.Net
ArkStream Capital recently successfully completed a Series A investment in IO.Net. This round of financing was led by Hack VC, with participation from over 20 well-known VCs and angel investors both domestically and internationally, raising a total of 30 million USD.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 participation from over 20 well-known VCs and angel investors both domestically and internationally, raising a total of $30 million. IO.Net is an important investment for ArkStream Capital in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized infrastructure (DePIN), demonstrating our expectation for AI to become a focal point of innovation in this market cycle.
Why Invest in IO.Net: Investing in the New Oil of the AI Era, Decentralized Mining of Human Computing Power
With the rapid development and widespread application of AI technology, the global demand for computing power is growing explosively, especially for GPUs (graphics processing units). This demand growth is both vertical, as tech giants compete to acquire Nvidia GPUs to train large language models (LLMs) with more parameters, and horizontal, as numerous AI startups and products attempt to apply technology to millions of use cases such as recommendation systems, education, personal health, medical research, and supply chains. This immense demand for computing power has made GPUs the "new oil" of the AI era.
Image Source: NetScribes, Ark Invest
IO.Net's Unique Solution
To address the global GPU shortage, IO.Net has proposed an innovative solution. By leveraging cryptographic technology to coordinate global human collaboration, IO.Net can massively utilize untapped human computing power. Dubbed the "Airbnb of GPUs," it relies on the Solana blockchain to provide a decentralized and permissionless global collaboration, verification, and payment platform, sharing idle GPU computing power from hardware clusters such as data centers, crypto mines, gaming PCs, and high-performance workstations.
Advantages and Impact of IO.Net
IO.Net not only offers customers low prices and instant online services without permission, at 10-20% of centralized cloud service providers, but also provides additional startup incentives for computing power providers through the upcoming IO token, collectively working towards the goal of connecting 1 million GPUs. Compared to other DePIN computing projects, IO.Net focuses on GPU computing power, with its GPU network scale already surpassing similar projects by over 100 times. Additionally, IO.Net is the first in the blockchain space to integrate cutting-edge ML technology stacks (such as Ray clusters, Kubernetes clusters, and giant clusters) into GPU DePIN projects and put them into large-scale practice, making it a leader not only in GPU quantity but also in technological application and model training capabilities.
Image Source: ArkStream Research; Data Source: io.net, depinhub.io, stats.akash.network
Future Outlook and Partnerships
As IO.Net continues to grow, its engineering team will enhance the network's GPU capacity to compete with centralized cloud service providers, aiming for 500,000 concurrent GPUs across the network, thereby providing services similar to Web 2 at lower costs. Through close partnerships with major DePIN and AI players (including Render Network, Filecoin, Solana, Ritual, etc.), IO.Net is gradually establishing its core position in this field. We believe IO.Net will become a leader and settlement layer in the decentralized GPU network in the medium to long term, bringing vitality to the entire Web 3xAI ecosystem.
Conclusion
ArkStream Capital's investment is not only an acknowledgment of IO.Net's future development potential but also a strong endorsement of the future direction of AI, DePIN, and the broader technology field. As a pioneer and supporter in the industry, ArkStream Capital will continue to provide support for IO.Net in computing infrastructure and ecosystem connections, jointly ushering in a new era of AI and decentralized networks.
View the original English version 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 Ventures
