Akash Network (AKT) is the world’s first decentralised open-source cloud compute marketplace, enabling anyone to buy and sell computing resources — CPU, GPU, and storage — in a permissionless, censorship-resistant environment. Built on the Cosmos SDK and launched in 2021, Akash creates an “AirBnB for cloud computing,” matching buyers (developers, AI companies, businesses) with sellers (data centres, crypto miners, and individuals with spare compute capacity) through a reverse auction mechanism that typically delivers cloud compute at 85% below the price of AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure.
Akash’s architecture: Providers — compute providers list available resources; Tenants — buyers submit deployment specifications and a maximum bid price; providers compete by submitting lower bids; the tenant selects a provider and deployment begins; payments stream continuously in AKT (or USDC) per block while the workload runs. Akash uses containerised deployments (Docker/Kubernetes compatible), making it straightforward for developers already using cloud services. With the explosion of AI demand for GPUs — and NVIDIA GPU shortages pushing A100 and H100 rents to $3+/hour on AWS — Akash’s GPU marketplace has become a key alternative for AI startups and researchers. AKT is used for staking (securing the network), governance, and as a settlement currency.
Example: An AI startup needs to fine-tune a 7B parameter language model. AWS quotes $2,400 for 48 GPU hours. On Akash, they find equivalent A100 compute at $380 in AKT — an 84% saving that extends their runway significantly.
Learn more: Akash Network — Learn
