Big Tech–Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft–have announced plans to invest roughly $320 billion in AI innovations this year, which marks a 28% spending increase over their combined AI spending in 2024.

Needless to say, hundreds of billions are pouring into Big Tech’s centralized, closed-source AI models. But might those billions be needlessly wasted in light of a truly revolutionary approach to artificial intelligence–namely, Decentralized AI?

Today’s AI landscape is dominated by a handful of centralized players–Big Tech firms that control data, models and access. This concentration raises concerns about censorship, monopolistic pricing and limited innovation. But what if AI could function outside the grasp of centralized corporations, similar to how Bitcoin functions without central banks?

Turns out that the same underlying technological premise for the decentralized network that has enabled Bitcoin to exceed a trillion dollar asset valuation and successfully execute more than 1 billion transactions without a hitch since its creation in 2009 – could work for AI.

Bitcoin operates on a blockchain network of nearly 22,000 independent computer servers–called nodes–around the world each running Bitcoin software. Anybody with a fast, powerful computer rig can download the software needed to join the Bitcoin blockchain. Rather than concentrating power in a few institutions, Bitcoin allows a distributed network to maintain and verify transactions–an approach that could redefine AI.

Rather than a few Big Tech titans such as Google and OpenAI controlling all artificial intelligence models, the decentralized AI platform has many independent systems–also called nodes–that work together to make AI decisions.

Within a decentralized AI model:

Most importantly, decentralized AI is running most effectively right now on the Bittensor blockchain. Bittensor is an open-source decentralized AI protocol developed and maintained by the Opentensor Foundation. One of the several financial backers behind the Bittensor DeAI blockchain is Digital Currency Group.

While DCG has invested in Bittensor, it does not control or own the protocol. Bittensor remains decentralized, governed by a mix of community-driven consensus and light oversight from its Foundation.

On Friday, the Founder and CEO of DCG–Barry Silbert–posted a letter to his more than 773,000 followers on X demonstrating his strong support and commitment to Bittensor’s DeAI model.

“Bittensor is not just another AI model or blockchain project—it’s a new way of thinking about intelligence itself, where knowledge is shared, innovation is permissionless and value is distributed across a decentralized network,” wrote Silbert.

“I think Bittensor is best described as the ‘World Wide Web of intelligence’—a global connected network where anybody can contribute, connect and innovate freely. Just like the ‘World Wide Web’ provided for open access to information, Bittensor provides open access to intelligence,” he wrote.

The open access Silbert references can be seen in the fact that Bittensor currently has 64 active subnets–if Bittensor was an app store a subnet would be analogous to a functioning app–but that number will grow rapidly as will the power and scope of the Bittensor DeAI network itself.

“We anticipate that [the number of subnets] is about to explode into the hundreds, then thousands of subnets, similar to the Cambrian explosion of websites that occurred after the launch of Mosaic’s Netscape browser in 1994. Yes, I think we are sitting at a similar inflection point for AI, thanks to Bittensor,” Silbert wrote.

Comparatively there are more than 200 million active websites with traffic across the Internet. If AI subnets grow as rapidly as websites did in the early Internet era, decentralized AI could soon challenge centralized AI’s dominance. One of the most promising companies in this space is Masa, which has launched two subnets on the DeAI blockchain using DCG’s Yuma accelerator:

Masa’s Co-Founder Calanthia Mei explains her preference for a decentralized AI platform instead of Big Tech’s centralized AI models.

“We chose Bittensor for its revolutionary incentive design. Most people don’t realize that over $900 million in annual incentives–power the Bittensor ecosystem. Each subnet, miner and validator battles for dominance, collectively forging a competitive and incentivized ecosystem of AI builders,” Mei explained in an email exchange.

“While each Bittensor subnet tackles specific AI challenges, we’ve focused on two frontiers: democratizing real-time data access and building the future of AI agent economy,” Mei added.

While trying to stay ahead of each other, it’ll be challenging for existing centralized AI systems such as ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Qwen and others–to also compete against decentralized AI’s unique advantages that include:

1. Incentive Models Reward Contribution, Unlike Traditional AI

2. No Single Point of Control or Censorship

3. Global, Permissionless Compute Power Removes AI Bottlenecks

4. More Transparent, Auditable and Trustworthy AI

5. AI Innovation Becomes Open-Source Instead of “Walled Gardens”

6. Lower Costs and Fairer Access to AI Capabilities

• DeAI leverages decentralized, competitive AI services, reducing costs for users and preventing monopolistic pricing.

It’s becoming clear that as Big Tech firms continues to spend hundreds of billions to outdo each other in the race for AI supremacy—blockchain’s top decentralized AI project could quietly beat them all.

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