Tether, the publisher of the largest stablecoin USDT, is currently looking for developers for the newly established AI department. This benefits from an almost unlimited computing infrastructure provided by a German company in which Tether invested last year.
Tether, which claims to be the largest company in the crypto industry, announces that it will expand its AI focus with Tether Data. Behind the pithy words – we are positioning ourselves “at the forefront of innovation” and are “expanding our role as a pioneer in shaping the future of technology” – the press release remains relatively thin when it comes to anything concrete.
The press release mentions “concerns about Big Tech’s monopolization of AI technology” and that it plans to promote transparency and privacy in the development of AI models. Tether Data wants to focus on a few “key areas”: first, developing open source AI models that will become new standards; second, integrating AI solutions into existing products to solve real-world problems; and thirdly, cooperation with the wider ecosystem and community.
Tether is currently looking for several software developers for the AI department. On the tender page, Tether emphasizes again that its ambition is to “democratize access to brand new AI models and strengthen the development of resilient, decentralized networks.” The managing director Paolo Ardoino promises on Twitter that they have “stunning projects and investments in the pipeline” and virtually endless access to AI computing power, as Tether recently made an important investment in one of the largest AI infrastructure operators.
Specifically, it is about the Northern Data Group, which honored Tether with a “strategic investment” in September 2023. The company started in 2018 with a focus exclusively on mining in Frankfurt as Northern Bitcoin AG and was initially listed on the Munich Stock Exchange. However, it renamed itself Northern Data AG in January 2020, accumulated massive amounts of GPUs for Ethereum mining and apparently managed to redirect them to AI calculations after the merge. The company works closely with Nvidia – it is an “Elite Partner” – and will be one of the first cloud providers to use Nvidia’s new Blackwell hardware, which specializes in generative AI.
It is not known how much Tether has invested in Northern Data. However, a somewhat confusing note is provided by a press release from Northern Data in January 2024. The company announced the “completion of the acquisition of Damoon Limited,” a subsidiary of Tether. Northern Data has now bought all shares in Damoon for 400 million euros, which corresponds to the purchase price of “more than 10,000 sought-after NVIDIA H100 Tresor Core GPUs that Damoon acquired”. These are extremely powerful GPUs specially developed for artificial intelligence, almost supercomputers in themselves.
With the completion of this transaction, Tether “became the anchor shareholder of Northern Data Group.” An anchor shareholder is a shareholder who has a significant stake in a company and cannot be ignored when making important decisions. Anchor shareholders usually hold significantly more than 10 percent of the shares, often 20 to 50 percent. A precise threshold is not defined. With a current market capitalization of Northern Data AG of 860 million euros, one can assume an investment of at least 80 million euros. It would also be conceivable that Tether has invested the full 400 million euros that Damoon’s hardware is worth, which would mean it would own almost half of the shares.
Otherwise, you learn relatively little about what Tether actually plans to do. Does the stablecoin provider want to develop its own AI models? Does he want to further develop the existing Large Language Models or make them openly available to an audience? Does he want to connect AI models with blockchains and P2P networks, and possibly also integrate them into stablecoins? All of this remains open. What is clear, however, is that Tessa, with its war chest, its close ties to the crypto market and its strategic investments, is excellently positioned to actually be at the forefront of AI innovation.
Source: https://bitcoinblog.de/2024/03/28/stablecoin-herausgeberin-tether-baut-ki-abteilung-auf/
