Kyle Okamoto on GPUs, Decentralized Compute, and Why Compute Is Becoming an Asset Class | Ep. 505

In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews, Kyle Okamoto, CTO of Aethir, explains why AI progress is increasingly constrained not by model quality—but by access to compute. With GPU supply bottlenecked by manufacturing limits, supply chain choke points, and data center constraints (power, cooling, networking, memory), Okamoto argues that compute has shifted from a simple rented input to a strategic resource that determines who can innovate, iterate, and compete. In his view, “compute is the new factory floor,” and the companies that control it—or can access it efficiently—will outpace everyone else in R&D velocity and product execution.

Okamoto frames this as a structural change in the market: demand for AI workloads is exploding across every industry, turning compute into something closer to energy or real estate—an infrastructure layer with commodity-like scarcity characteristics. That shift is driving the financialization of compute, where capital markets and creative financing structures become essential to scaling AI infrastructure. Okamoto explains how Aethir supports this transition by enabling providers (“cloud hosts”) to monetize underutilized GPUs globally, improve ROI, and expand capacity using mechanisms like cash-flow-based financing—helping break the “death spiral” where teams can’t get enough compute to improve products and can’t improve products enough to justify more compute.

Kyle Okamoto on Why Decentralized Compute Matters for Enterprise AI

A key differentiator Okamoto emphasizes is enterprise-grade reliability: uptime, governance, transparency, and performance validation. Aethir uses its ATH token not only as a payment rail for renting GPUs, but as an enforcement layer for service guarantees—requiring clusters to be staked and tested (bench tests, performance checks) to meet SLAs. He also highlights Aethir’s distributed “checker nodes,” which continuously verify network telemetry to ensure GPU quality and availability, shifting trust from centralized operators toward community-enforced oversight. The result, Okamoto says, is a “cloud-plus-decentralized” future where enterprises adopt multi-source compute strategies to secure capacity when traditional providers can’t meet demand.