Decentralization democratizes access to AI computing — Theta Labs exec

The artificial intelligence sector has exploded and seems to show no signs of slowing down. AI-related startups raised a record-breaking $11.8 billion in Q3 of 2024, accounting for 30% of all venture capital funding during the quarter. 

Most companies and projects utilize centralized services such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) for cloud computing power, which can be costly and prone to outages.

Decentralization and blockchain are solutions to these issues, according to Theta Labs head of strategy Wes Levitt, who told The Agenda podcast that decentralized cloud computing saves customers money and offers greater reliability and flexibility.

Levitt spoke to hosts Jonathan DeYoung and Ray Salmond for episode 51 of The Agenda, where he broke down how decentralization helps democratize access to computing power, why academia has become Theta Labs’ top customer, and more.

Decentralized cloud services expand access to AI

Theta Labs is the company behind Theta Network, which describes itself as a decentralized cloud for AI, media and entertainment. According to Levvit, Theta is focused on decentralizing the cloud in order “to get away from having only a few points of failure and from having near-monopolies in the case of the major cloud providers and what they can provide in pricing and other terms.”

Levvit shared that while Theta started out focused primarily on media and entertainment, it has seen a massive influx in AI-related customers since the current AI boom began. One particular sector that has found decentralized cloud computing especially useful is academia. “The strongest inroads we’ve made in the last six to 12 months has been in academia, actually,” he said. 

Related: 6 Questions for Wes Levitt of Theta Labs

“We caught on with KAIST, a university in Korea, and pretty quickly we were able to expand to four out of the five top Korean universities,” he explained, adding that Theta also “recently signed on University of Oregon and [is] talking now to a few of the US universities.”