io.net Turns One: Building the Intelligent Stack for AI

io.net just celebrated its first full year of building out on-demand AI infrastructure for the world at scale, and what a year it has been! Twelve months of intense product development, client onboarding, community advocacy, and business scaling have meaningfully redefined how organizations, large and small, access compute and break out from the limitations of a handful of cloud giants.

Redefining Cloud Infrastructure on a Global Scale

io.net now operates the intelligent stack for AI, combining the world's largest decentralized compute network with unified orchestration and intelligence layers. With over 10,000 GPUs and CPUs across 138+ regions, io.cloud provides the foundation, while io.intelligence delivers model access, agent orchestration, and intelligent routing through a single API. This isn't just distributed hardware; it's a legitimately new way for serious AI teams to build without cloud lock-in, delays, or hyperscaler pricing.

The network has generated over $13 million in revenue while maintaining a Total Value Locked (TVL) exceeding $5 million and recently hit an all-time high of over $85,000 earned in a single day.

These metrics are impressive and reflect genuine utility, but the real metric of success remains in the cost savings that io.net is passing on to teams. Teams that opt for io.net’s independent cloud network to build on, train models, and scale inference workloads see up to 70% savings compared to centralized cloud providers.. 

While these centralized providers concentrate data centers into national pipelines across limited regions, io.net has pioneered the global geographic distribution across six continents of the same infrastructure while maintaining low-latency access to enterprise-grade hardware regardless of location. This decentralized approach eliminates the regional bottlenecks that have plagued centralized providers, while giving developers true global compute access.

The Intelligence Layer Takes Shape

While io.cloud established the foundation, 2024 marked the emergence of io.intelligence as the unified toolkit transforming how teams interact with AI models and agents.

Inference provides access to 25+ open-source models through a single API, eliminating the complexity of managing multiple vendor relationships. Teams can test, evaluate, and route between models without changing integrations, and achieve up to 70% cost savings over Big Tech providers.

Retrieval Engine adds advanced RAG capabilities, allowing teams to upload documents and query them through natural language for schema-validated responses with exact citations that minimize hallucinations and ensure complete audit trails.

Agent Builder (launching soon) will complete the io.intelligence toolkit, giving teams full control over how their agentic systems think, act, and orchestrate across the distributed network.

Community-Powered Growth

Driving the infrastructure metrics from below lies a vibrant ecosystem of builders and innovators. io.net's globally distributed team of 93 members across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and North America mirrors the network itself: decentralized, resilient, and inclusive.

Beyond the io.net core team, the community represents a similar global demographic makeup, which is driving the network's continued growth. Over 2,200 teams have adopted io.intelligence, generating 1.45 million API completions and processing 275 million output tokens via API alongside 38.5 million tokens through the chat interface.

These metrics demonstrate real adoption of the intelligent stack: teams routing production workloads through io.net's orchestration layer rather than being locked into single-vendor APIs. From document analysis to agent orchestration, teams are proving that decentralized intelligence can replace centralized AI infrastructure.

io.net’s commitment to showcasing distributed network technology's real capabilities through customer outcomes has strongly resonated with users across social media over the last year. Their informative content has already received over 28.9 million views across all platforms. Not bad for a company competing against unlimited marketing budgets of centralized industry titans.

Success Built on Transparency

Transparency sets io.net apart in an industry often characterized by black box operations. io.explorer provides real-time visibility into network performance, staking activity, and compute utilization. Users can verify device availability and cluster performance themselves rather than trusting provider claims.

io.intelligence offers full visibility into model performance and cost breakdowns across diverse workloads from document analysis to agent orchestration. Teams know exactly what they're paying for and how their infrastructure performs.

These strategic partners are building real-world implementations that experience the impact of io.intelligence firsthand. Leonardo AI uses io.net's A100 and L40S GPUs to serve 16 million users across creative industries. The Injective partnership enables AI-driven blockchain operations through integrated GPU networks and iAgent frameworks. And Gaia leverages on-demand GPU clusters for autonomous AI agent networks with real-time inferencing. Meanwhile, BC8 launched and generated 6,380 creations, demonstrating consumer application capabilities. Each partnership reports measurable outcomes including cost savings, performance improvements, and production-scale deployments.

Industry Recognition and Holistic Growth

io.net's impressive growth reflects the success of both the network and community. The team participated in over 45 events this year, including keynote presentations at Token 2049 by CEO Gaurav Sharma and CMO Jack Collier. 

During the same period, io.net Astro ambassadors organized over 25 regional events worldwide to support local adoption and provide technical education. This combination of industry recognition and community grassroots initiatives is proving to be a potent mixture in helping teams at the global and regional level understand how to integrate decentralized compute into their existing workflows, while also establishing io.net as the premier authority figure in distributed cloud network technology.

The network's ongoing success continues to attract new and innovative strategic partnerships that are helping expand the diversity within the io.net ecosystem. From integration with leading ML frameworks to collaboration with emerging AI companies, io.net is building the connective tissue for the next generation of decentralized AI applications.

Building From a Position of Strength

Looking ahead, io.net will build out each layer of the intelligent stack. io.cloud continues expanding with enhanced bare metal access and enterprise clusters. io.intelligence will add advanced agent orchestration through Agent Builder, expanded model libraries, and hybrid execution capabilities. io.apps will showcase new possibilities as the platform demonstrates what's possible when compute, intelligence, and applications work as a unified system.

SuperAgg will provide aggregated agent tooling, creating access to 300K passive inventory in service of increasing demand. TNE (Total Network Earnings) records all revenue on-chain, providing transparent validation of network performance that distinguishes io.net from both Big Tech cloud providers and other Web3 orgs. These developments build on the foundation established over the past year while addressing the evolving needs of AI teams.

The staking ecosystem continues to expand, with 10.7 million tokens staked by community members. The success of the network, combined with the explosive growth of a highly engaged community, demonstrates a clear alignment between infrastructure providers and users and sets the stage for further alignment and expansion of both.

The Path Forward for io.net

io.net's first year demonstrates that decentralized infrastructure can compete with, and often exceed, centralized alternatives. The combination of cost efficiency, global reach, and transparent operations creates a compelling alternative for teams serious about AI development.

As the AI landscape continues evolving, io.net provides the flexible, scalable foundation needed for the next wave of innovation. Whether training foundation models, deploying inference at scale, or building agentic systems, teams have proven that decentralized compute isn't just viable, it's superior.

The numbers speak to network growth, but the real story is empowerment. io.net has given thousands of developers access to infrastructure previously reserved for tech giants. That democratization of AI capability will drive innovation far beyond what any single company could achieve alone.

Ready to build on the intelligent stack? Start with io.cloud for instant GPU access or explore io.intelligence for model orchestration, agents, and more.