Stablecoin issuers are starting to invest in the hardware layer of AI chips. Tether Capital, a Tether subsidiary, participated in AI chipmaker Tenstorrent’s $1.5 billion Series E funding round, which values the company at $6.2 billion. Led by chip architect Jim Keller, Tenstorrent develops high-performance AI processors, server systems, and software, with a focus on open AI computing infrastructure.
It’s worth taking a closer look at where the money is going. Tenstorrent plans to use the funds to expand production and deployment of its Galaxy server systems while advancing its AI chip and CPU research and development. Its technology already serves companies such as Samsung and LG, with applications in large language models and video generation. Tether’s investment is entering a supply chain clearly aimed at providing computing power, rather than staying within the crypto asset ecosystem.
The shift by a stablecoin issuer to allocate its balance sheet toward physical computing capacity is more significant than the size of the funding round itself. The circulation of USDT gives Tether a substantial pool of capital to allocate, and it has chosen to put some of it behind efforts to reduce reliance on the proprietary hardware and cloud services of a handful of major technology companies. To see how the cost and supply of computing power might in turn affect the barrier to developing AI applications, all we need to do over the next few quarters is watch how Tenstorrent brings its production capacity online.
$USDT #Tether #AI芯片 #computing power
It’s worth taking a closer look at where the money is going. Tenstorrent plans to use the funds to expand production and deployment of its Galaxy server systems while advancing its AI chip and CPU research and development. Its technology already serves companies such as Samsung and LG, with applications in large language models and video generation. Tether’s investment is entering a supply chain clearly aimed at providing computing power, rather than staying within the crypto asset ecosystem.
The shift by a stablecoin issuer to allocate its balance sheet toward physical computing capacity is more significant than the size of the funding round itself. The circulation of USDT gives Tether a substantial pool of capital to allocate, and it has chosen to put some of it behind efforts to reduce reliance on the proprietary hardware and cloud services of a handful of major technology companies. To see how the cost and supply of computing power might in turn affect the barrier to developing AI applications, all we need to do over the next few quarters is watch how Tenstorrent brings its production capacity online.
$USDT #Tether #AI芯片 #computing power