Artificial intelligence may still be in its early days, but it has already delivered significant scientific and technological breakthroughs across the developed world. Unfortunately, these developments have come at a cost: the dangerous centralisation of AI.
Many reports state that of the top 50 private AI companies, all are based in the developed world, with 80% in the United States.
AI remains skewed toward well-capitalised tech giants in the developed world.
For many Indian companies, the price of entry to the AI revolution is unreachable. The need of the hour is to ensure that innovation and AI development are accessible to the broadest range of projects.
Compute for the few
At the heart of the problem lies compute, or more accurately, access to compute. Training and deploying large AI models requires vast GPU power. But supply has not kept pace, which is driving the price for NVIDIA’s H100 chips to more than $30,000.
An ambitious AI research company might spend 80% or more of its funding on compute – resources that could otherwise go to R&D or talent. Well-funded tech giants may raise billions to secure them; the rest of the world cannot.
The consequences are far-reaching. AI-driven innovation risks becoming a monopoly technology, controlled by a handful of corporations and nations. Promising Indian applications of AI in agriculture, education or healthcare may never materialise – not because of a lack of talent, but because of limited access to compute.
Geopolitically, the undersupply of compute is beginning to mirror oil or silicon. Nations without sovereign access to compute will be forced to import it, creating dependencies on countries which may not align with their national objectives and exposing importers to foreign energy and real estate markets. These dependencies threaten not only economic competitiveness but also national security.
The dangers of centralised AI
If access to computers remains concentrated in developed countries, so too will influence. Frontier AI technology, from LLMs to diffusion models, will be shaped by the same perspectives, narrowing diversity and embedding systemic risks. Developing nations risk being locked out from contributing to, or benefiting from, the technology that is defining the global economy.
Centralisation ensures disproportionate returns flow to those with privileged access, leaving behind smaller players, often those building locally relevant tools. Over time, barriers to competing in the AI market could become a destabilising oligopoly, freezing the developing world out of a key industrial shift. Concentrated control of infrastructure has always produced distortions, and AI will be no different.
Access to compute levels the field
The solution to the challenges of accessibility and centralisation is surprisingly simple: compute marketplaces powered by blockchain. Just as Uber unlocked idle cars and Airbnb unlocked spare rooms, decentralised compute marketplaces unlock underutilised hardware. The result is not just lower prices but a more diverse and resilient ecosystem of suppliers and consumers.
Across the globe, millions of GPUs sit idle in data centres, enterprises, universities and homes. By pooling these GPUs in on-demand clusters through a blockchain, underutilised hardware is made available at a fraction of centralised compute costs. Indian startups, as well as those in lower-income countries, may then afford to scale AI workloads, no longer shut out by industry leaders’ capital advantage.
Recent changes to skilled worker visas in the US and elsewhere heighten the urgency to find solutions to this problem. With world-class Indian talent now more likely to build on home soil rather than in the US, access to quality compute will be a key enabler, allowing innovators to compete globally and underpinning India’s impact on the next wave of technological breakthroughs.
Blockchain enables DePIN where others have stalled.
Without blockchain, this model would not be possible. Tokens act as the coordination and trust layer, aligning incentives across Decentralised Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePINs). Leading DePINs require compute suppliers to stake tokens to incentivise reliability, with penalties for downtime. Developers pay in tokens, enabling seamless settlement across borders.
For hardware providers, tokenised rewards create fairer economics: compensating compute owners based on usage, providing previously unavailable revenue without sacrificing their core purpose. For developers, access to cheaper compute incentivises participation and innovation in AI. This creates a virtuous feedback loop – as more participants join the market for decentralised compute, compute becomes more affordable and abundant.
Closing the gap
Some critics have argued that decentralised compute isn’t as performant as hyperscalers, citing latency and quality concerns. The reality is quite different. DePINs deliver competitive performance across latency, concurrency and throughput. Techniques such as smart workload routing, mesh networking and tokenised incentives for high availability not only help maintain performance but also optimise it dynamically based on workload needs.
Additionally, certain DePINs have built transparent network explorers, enabling developers and investors to verify performance claims in real time. These mechanisms help make DePINs even more reliable and cost-effective than traditional providers.
DePINs are also more diverse than hyperscaler offerings. Over 13 million devices are online today, allowing developers to tap a wide spectrum of hardware and find the right tool for their AI projects, from high-performance cloud-grade GPUs to specialised edge devices.
Giving every builder a fair shot
We have a very narrow window to define the technological landscape for generations to come. A handful of US and Chinese corporations may have taken the lead, but decentralised compute marketplaces offer a promising alternative. By lowering costs and widening access, startups, scaleups, researchers and enterprises globally can compete on a more equal footing. Indian developers can build models for their own languages, healthcare systems, cultural beliefs and financial needs.
India’s expanding role on the world stage will only translate into technological influence if its builders can rely on unbiased compute that amplifies, rather than obscures, India’s own priorities.
The question is not whether decentralisation is necessary but how to get Indian developers onboarded to this opportunity while simultaneously increasing the number of Indian companies that list their excess compute on DePINs.
Only by decentralising compute can AI become truly accessible and serve as many people as possible, rather than just the entrenched oligopolies.