Hive, which simply raised $13 million—a Sequence A spherical led by SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s enterprise arm, and joined by members together with OneRagtime—needs to reinvent cloud computing’s centralized mannequin.
Cloud infrastructure usually orbits giant, bodily knowledge facilities, however Geneva-based Hive hopes to supply another, dispersed mannequin: an aggregation of particular person units’ unused laborious drive and computing capacities.
“It could be one of these big bets that could really work, and if it works, [investors] want to be part of it,” Hive founder David Gurlé informed Fortune. “The efficiency that we gained, the upcycling capability that we had, and the waste that we reduce from the 10 billion potentially available computers around the world is way too compelling to ignore.”
This restructuring towards decentralization ought to assist companies extra effectively plan for cloud-related bills, promote server autonomy as an alternative of counting on a small variety of cloud providers, and scale back power use, he added. Gurlé sees a distributed and decentralized cloud mannequin as “the most efficient network infrastructure”—why burden one laptop with a 10-hour process, when 10 units might full an hour’s work in tandem.
International knowledge facilities are notoriously energy intensive: In 2023, they consumed 7.4 gigawatts of energy, a 55% improve from the earlier 12 months, in response to Brightlio knowledge. This quantities to about 3% of world electrical energy consumption.
“We are big believers of Hive’s distributed cloud technology that will enable cheaper and more efficient access to computing power and storage, a critical point when most of our ventures have an AI component requiring increasing such computing power,” mentioned Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures, which plans to make use of Hive’s companies.
Customers and contributors retailer recordsdata on “hiveDisk” and contribute a section of their unused laborious drive to Hive’s community “to effectively lower their subscription costs and build the distributed cloud,” in response to an organization assertion. Since October 2023, over 25,000 customers and contributors from 147 nations have joined the community. This further computing capability permits Hive’s company clients to handle workloads starting from GenAI to 3D modeling.
“The centralization of computational resources into the hands of a few has heightened the risks of privacy violations and data exploitation, escalated cloud costs, and stifled innovation,” Stéphanie Hospital, OneRagtime’s founder and CEO, mentioned in an announcement.
