Paradigm Bets $50M on Nous—Solana’s About to Get an AI Brain Transplant

Solana’s blockchain just got a shot of adrenaline. Venture giant Paradigm is dumping $50 million into Nous, a decentralized AI project promising to turn the network into a machine-learning powerhouse. Move over, Ethereum—there’s a new playground for crypto’s smartest algorithms.

Why this matters: AI is eating crypto, and Solana’s speed makes it the perfect testbed for decentralized neural networks. Nous claims its protocol will let developers train models without handing data to Big Tech—assuming the VCs don’t rug-pull first.

The fine print: That $50M buys a lot of GPUs, but Solana’s track record with uptime is... let’s call it ’aspirational.’ If this works, it could mint a dozen new degenerate trading narratives. If it fails? Another line item on Paradigm’s ’thesis diversification’ spreadsheet.

Nous Research team is ‘crypto native,’ cofounder says

Nous Research aims to leverage the Solana blockchain to run the decentralized computing network needed to train its LLMs. Instead of relying on a single data center, the platform will allow anyone to contribute their idle GPU power to help train the models. In return, contributors will earn tokens as a reward.

“We think of the incentive mechanism behind crypto to push people to actually utilize their idle compute less as a donation but more as a transaction,” said Nous Research co-founder Karan Malhotra.

Malhotra acknowledged the widespread skepticism around AI and crypto. In particular, he noted that many crypto projects are driven by hype and said there is “a lot of room for grift.” However, he emphasized that their research supports blockchain’s real use case in decentralized training.

The Series A round puts Nous Research’s valuation at $1 billion, financed almost exclusively by Paradigm. The company had previously raised $20 million from investors including Distributed Global, North Island Ventures, and Delphi Digital.