News linked to both this project and an event.
: AI reasoning cloud startup General Compute has obtained a $400 million loan from Upper90. This deal is the world’s first financing project to use dedicated inference chips as collateral. The company has built a proprietary AI reasoning cloud platform based on SambaNova’s self-developed ASIC chips, primarily targeting Agent-type AI computing workloads. Compared to traditional GPU clouds, it offers faster token processing speeds and lower operational latency. The hardware requires no water cooling and can be directly deployed in traditional data centers and idle cryptocurrency mining facilities.
According to The Block, Bernstein stated that before the compliant computing power futures planned by CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange are approved, AI computing power derivatives adopting crypto market mechanisms have already launched. Currently, Architect's offshore trading platform AX has launched GPU perpetual futures, while Kalshi has listed GPU rental price event contracts regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
According to monitoring by the BlockFlow KOL opinion aggregation platform, NVIDIA (NVDA) is collaborating with Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) and Noetra to build a 140MW AI factory, utilizing Vera CPU and Rubin GPU to support trillion-parameter model training and robot ecosystem development, with multiple KOLs optimistic about the prospects of this collaboration.
Apple is shifting its reliance to NVIDIA GPUs to support its artificial intelligence operations, as the company's self-developed M2 Ultra chip has failed to meet expectations when running advanced AI workloads.Sources indicate that Apple previously attempted to use its own servers to run Google's Gemini model to power AI capabilities for the new Siri. However, the performance of its chips fell short of requirements, ultimately forcing the company to turn to NVIDIA GPUs deployed on Google Cloud. Additionally, the development of Apple's next-generation AI server chip, "Baltra," has been delayed, while the M7 Ultra chip, which is expected to rival the performance of NVIDIA's Blackwell architecture, is unlikely to be launched before 2029 at the earliest. (Coin Bureau)
According to Reuters, Meta plans to mass-produce its self-developed data center AI chip "Iris" starting from September, as part of its fourth-generation Meta Training and Inference Accelerators project, to enhance the AI capabilities of platforms such as Facebook and Instagram and reduce reliance on external GPUs such as those from Nvidia and AMD. Internal memos show that Iris completed testing in just 6 weeks with no major defects; Meta plans to deploy 7 gigawatts of computing power this year and increase it to 14 gigawatts by 2027, with its AI infrastructure spending in 2024 potentially reaching up to $145 billion. To secure expansion, the company has signed long-term supply agreements with Samsung Electronics, Sandisk, and Sumitomo Electric to cope with "price increases" and shortages of memory and AI chips.
According to TechFlow Research, Goldman Sachs' June 30 AI Project Pulse Monthly Report shows that 7 major transactions tracked in June totaled nearly $7 billion. Argentum AI signed a $4.1 billion contract to deploy 27,000 GB300 GPUs for a leading AI company, supported by a 300MW Poland data center, going online in phases in 2026; India's Yotta Sovereign Cloud procured $2 billion worth of 20,736 B300s and 5,120 B200s, subsequently expanding to six Southeast Asian countries. Crypto mining farm AiOnX acquired 77% equity of Genesis Digital Assets for $500 million, converting 1.3GW of power from 15 mining farms to AI computing power. CoreWeave and Dell built the world's first fully validated Vera Rubin NVL72 rack, with 72 Rubin GPUs plus 36 Vera CPUs; NVDA confirmed mass production in the second half of 2026. SMCI raised $7 billion to address approximately $39 billion in backlog orders, covering more than 20 clients, with funds used to lock in upstream components in advance. Goldman Sachs simultaneously raised its global server market size forecast.
Odaily Bitcoin mining company and data center Hive Digital Technologies has announced it will raise $100 million through the issuance of zero-coupon exchangeable senior notes due in 2031, aiming to further expand its computing infrastructure. Additionally, the company has signed a non-binding letter of intent (LOI) with a Swedish sovereign technology firm possessing an investment-grade credit rating, intending to lease approximately 30MW of computing capacity at its data center for a term of up to 10 years. Under the agreement, Hive will deploy approximately 25MW of IT computing capacity and plans to utilize up to 10,000 Nvidia GB300 GPUs. However, the LOI currently remains subject to further negotiations and the signing of a final definitive agreement. (DataCenterDynamics)
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.