Aethir Co-Founder Mark Rydon on Scaling Decentralized Cloud Computing | Blockcast 47
Having been exposed to China's GPU cloud sector, Mark Rydon decided to take on the challenges with centralized GPU clouds, such as Google's Stadia, which struggled to provide low-latency gaming services economically.
Applying a decentralised structure, Aethir allows more accessible cloud services closer to users, which reduces latency and benefits high-demand applications like gaming and AI. Its approach optimizes for latency and scalability, making decentralized GPU clouds more viable and responsive to global demand.
In this episode, Rydon reflects on his journey and explains how Aethir uses a token system to take on giants like AWS and Google Cloud that create inflated prices and long-term contracts that can be financially strenuous for startups.
Rydon also discusses how the challenges in scaling a system that subsidizes and incentivizes network participation beyond traditional models to provide economic benefits to its users.
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Mark Rydon
Co-founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Aethir
Mark Rydon is the Co-Founder and Head of Strategy at Aethir, the leading decentralized enterprise-grade cloud computing network.
Mark's strategic leadership and visionary efforts have been instrumental in Aethir's exponential growth. Since its inception in 2022, Aethir has expanded from a small team of 5 to a robust organization of 157 employees, scaling from $0 to $3 billion FDV in 2 years.
With a focus on revolutionizing DePIN with its Scalable Decentralised Cloud Infrastructure (DCI) for Gaming & AI, the company has grown from zero to a multi-billion dollar network, boasting the largest fleet of 3000+ NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs in the Web3 industry. Backed by industry giants like NVIDIA, Super Micro, HPE, and Foxconn, Aethir’s infrastructure makes high-performance GPU resources accessible and affordable. Additionally, Aethir has secured over $130M in funding, 2M community members, and 90,000 Checker Node licenses, furthering Mark’s commitment to a more equitable and accessible DCI landscape. Aethir counts among its investors Framework Ventures, Sanctor Capital, Animoca Brands, Hashkey and more.
Before co-founding Aethir, Mark gained extensive experience in infrastructure building and resource allocation, managing a 400 people team for a $34B oil and gas project at Wheatstone. In addition to Aethir, he serves as a partner at the VC fund Flux Capital and Gas Global, where he advises projects in blockchain technology, mining, and investments.