“It all comes down to power,” O’Leary said. “Whether it’s AI data centers or Bitcoin mining, they need the same thing—energy infrastructure. And often, now, these projects are one and the same.”
Grok’s advantage lies in speed and context awareness. Unlike bots that simply track ticker mentions, Grok evaluates emotional tone, crowd reactions, and engagement patterns.
The funding arrives as Gradient unveils its two foundational protocols—Lattica, a peer-to-peer data delivery layer, and Parallax, a decentralized inference engine capable of scaling large AI models across heterogeneous compute networks.
Over 60% of the world’s AI compute is concentrated in the hands of a few companies, giving rise to concerns about censorship, innovation bottlenecks, and exclusionary access. Gata proposes a solution: an open infrastructure where compute, data, and value flow back to users, not monopolies.
The PWC report arrives as a counterpunch to an increasingly loud narrative driven by AI doomers. This week, tabloids including The Sun amplified claims from Oklahoma State University professor Subhash Kak, who predicted that AI will cause a global population collapse, shrinking the planet’s population from 8 billion to 100 million by the year 2300.
