Hive, which has just raised $13 million – a Series A round led by SC Ventures, the venture capital arm of Standard Chartered, and joined by participants including OneRagtime – wants to reinvent the centralized model of cloud computing.
Cloud infrastructure typically orbits around large physical data centers, but Geneva-based Hive hopes to offer an alternative, dispersed model: an aggregation of the unused hard drive and processing capabilities of individual devices.
“It could be one of these big bets that could actually work, and if it works, [investors] I want to be a part of it,” said Hive founder David Gurlé Fortune. “The efficiencies we have gained, the upcycling capacity we have, and the waste we reduce from the 10 billion computers potentially available around the world are too compelling to ignore.”
This restructuring toward decentralization should help companies more efficiently plan cloud-related expenses, promote server autonomy instead of relying on a small number of cloud providers, and reduce energy consumption, he added. Gurlé sees a distributed, decentralized cloud model as “the most efficient network infrastructure”: why burden one computer with a 10-hour task, when 10 devices could complete an hour’s work in tandem.
Global data centers are notoriously energy-intensive: They consumed 7.4 gigawatts of energy in 2023, a 55% increase from the previous year, according to Brightlio data. This equates to approximately 3% of global electricity consumption.
“We firmly believe that Hive’s distributed cloud technology will enable cheaper and more efficient access to computing power and storage, a critical point when most of our initiatives have an AI component that requires scaling up that computing power,” he said. said Alex Manson, head of SC Ventures, which plans to use Hive’s services.
Users and contributors store files on “hiveDisk” and contribute a segment of their unused hard drive to Hive’s network “to effectively reduce subscription costs and build the distributed cloud,” according to a company statement. Since October 2023, over 25,000 users and contributors from 147 countries have joined the network. This additional compute capacity enables Hive’s enterprise customers to handle workloads ranging from GenAI to 3D modeling.
“The centralization of computational resources in the hands of a few has increased the risks of privacy violations and data exploitation, increased cloud costs, and stifled innovation,” Stéphanie Hospital, founder and CEO of OneRagtime, said in a statement.