In an effort to present extra folks and organizations entry to “highly effective, long-lasting computing sources,” distributed cloud supplier Hive is elevating €12 million (about $13 million) in a Collection A spherical led by SC Ventures, Standard Chartered’s innovation, fintech funding, and ventures division. The distributed cloud know-how developed by Hive would supply entry to processing energy and storage extra affordably and successfully.
With Hive, an organization based mostly in Geneva, Switzerland, the cloud is being reimagined as a distributed cloud infrastructure that mixes the underused exhausting drive and processing energy of particular person gadgets, changing the pricey centralized mannequin that requires bodily servers. The Hive mannequin lets corporations reduce down on reliance on a small variety of cloud suppliers, successfully handle their cloud-related prices, and use cloud power at a a lot decrease price. OneRagtime, a French enterprise capital fund that led Hive’s Seed spherical, and a set of personal traders additionally joined the funding spherical.
World information facilities, which offer power to the cloud globally, wanted 7.4 gigawatts of energy in 2023, up 55% from 2022. As of proper now, information facilities use as much as 3% of the world’s electrical energy, however by 2030, estimates point out that quantity may attain 4%.
“Hive is addressing the urgent want for a brand new cloud paradigm that democratizes entry, lowers monetary boundaries, and encourages innovation,” stated David Gurlé, the founder and Govt Chairman of Hive. “With billions of gadgets linked to the Web and greater than 70% of our gadgets’ computing energy, Hive’s community-driven mannequin creates ‘The Proper Cloud,’ offering a safer, resilient, and environmentally pleasant different that additionally encourages a extra egalitarian cloud answer. We respect the continued help from INRIA and Bpifrance in addition to our traders in serving to us to comprehend our lofty goals.”
Entry Extra CPU, GPU, NPU As Wanted
With the intention to scale back their membership prices and create the distributed cloud, Hive has gathered over 25,000 energetic customers and contributors from 147 nations. These customers retailer their information on hiveDisk and donate a portion of their unused exhausting drives to hiveNet. This has occurred since October 2023. The computing energy provided to hiveNet additionally drives hiveCompute, which permits companies to deal with duties together with 3D modeling, video processing, and GenAI inference.
The structure of HiveNet makes it doable to entry extra CPU, GPU, or NPU as wanted, rising the critically required processing energy. Companies on the lookout for extra energy may also create their very own unique hiveNet, the place IT managers are in full management of the gadgets.
Hive introduced a Joint Growth Companion (JDP) program in December. By shut collaboration with essential companions, the JDP program goals to revolutionize the cloud panorama for corporations who use GenAI LLM calculations.
“We’re huge believers of Hive’s distributed cloud know-how that can allow cheaper and extra environment friendly entry to computing energy and storage, a crucial level when most of our ventures might have an AI element requiring rising such computing energy,” stated Alex Manson, the founding father of SC Ventures. “Along with our funding, our ventures will likely be leveraging Hive’s companies.”
“Cloud know-how has opened up horizons of innovation, nevertheless it additionally comes with challenges by way of prices, safety, information privateness, and environmental affect, heightened by the rising demand for computing sources, particularly for synthetic intelligence,” stated Stéphanie Hospital, Founder and CEO of OneRagtime. “Hive facilitates the sharing of computational energy sources and makes cloud entry extra secure, economical, and efficient for all customers because of its revolutionary distributed cloud methodology. OneRagtime is very thrilled to assist Hive’s staff and targets as an early supporter and funding.”
