Crypto Billionaire Jed McCaleb's New Nonprofit Buys $500 Million Worth of NVIDIA's H100 AI Chips

A new nonprofit called Navigation Fund created by crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb purchased $500 million worth of NVIDIA H100 AI chips, making it one of the largest AI computing clusters in the world. Navigation Fund handed ownership of the chips to Voltage Park, a for-profit organization that functions as a subsidiary of Navigation Fund. 

The H100 or "Hopper" is a powerful chip from NVIDIA, the chip manufacturer that currently dominates the AI chip industry but is seeing pressure and innovation from competitors. The H100 launched in the spring of 2022 and features 80 billion transistors and fast speeds to enable various AI applications. 

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AI chips work faster and more efficiently than CPU chips to enable natural language processing tools like ChatGPT, self-driving car functions and various other AI and machine learning-powered processes. An increased use of AI applications means higher demand for AI chips, causing firms like OpenAI to consider entering a new market and producing their own chips.

Voltage Park’s CEO, Eric Park, noted in a TechCrunch interview, "The shortage for cutting-edge compute is dire. I have conversations with companies of all sizes — startups, scale-ups and big labs — and pretty much every single one tells me they can't get enough H100s to train their models. There's a compounding difficulty for startups and scale-ups who can't sign the large contracts many clouds require to access these chips, and that's really limiting AI innovation."

Voltage Park aims to introduce AI chips into a cloud computing leasing program, with the primary objective of providing affordable access to AI computing resources for users. This initiative should facilitate both short-term and long-term utilization, addressing the challenges posed by the AI chip shortage.

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McCaleb, who is best known for co-founding crypto firms Ripple, Mt. Gox and Stellar, launched Voltage Park as an open-source research and development organization. This contrasts with the current landscape where large tech firms dominate most AI research and development behind closed doors. 

Startups including Imbue and Character.ai already use Voltage Park’s cluster of AI chips for AI model experimentation. Imbue is developing a new AI-powered creative platform, while Character.ai is creating a new generation of AI-powered chatbots.

Park also discussed the motivations behind creating Voltage Park with TechCrunch. "The goal was to unlock access to startups, scale-ups and research organizations that are currently blocked from this space due to restrictive contracts, the scarcity of GPUs and high minimum purchase thresholds so that they can access the vital resources they need to innovate. We're continuing to speak with folks in the industry to understand their needs and are using what we learn to inform how we build out our remaining clusters so that they're useful to as many customers as possible," he said.

According to a spokesperson, the Navigation Fund will support research and organizations in other areas beyond AI including criminal justice reform, climate research, farmed animal welfare and others.

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