Investment firm and technology incubator Bitfury announced today it has committed to investing $50 million in Gonka, a decentralized network for high‑efficiency AI compute.
Unlike centralized AI computation providers that gate access to compute through APIs and corporate pipelines, Gonka enables anyone with hardware - from a single GPU to a full-scale data center - to contribute power directly to meaningful AI workloads, including model training, inference, and scientific simulations. It was originally incubated by Product Science, the U.S.-based software company founded by the Liberman siblings - Anna, David, Daniil, and Maria - and backed by Coatue Management, Slow Ventures, and K5.
In November 2025, Bitfury announced a $1 billion initiative to advance ethical emerging technologies. The $50 million investment in Gonka will be the firm’s first under this structure and is designed to accelerate the development and adoption of the Gonka protocol and its ecosystem.
Launched in August 2025, the Gonka network has grown rapidly over three months, already achieving computational resources analogous to more than 6000 NVIDIA H100 GPUs, which is provided by a distributed network of hosts for the AI inference tasks.
"Decentralized machine intelligence is quickly becoming one of the most important frontiers in AI infrastructure, and Gonka is advancing this frontier with remarkable speed,” said Val Vavilov, CEO and co-founder of Bitfury. “Their Proof-of-Work model channels hardware power directly toward productive AI workloads, which aligns perfectly with Bitfury’s mission to support open, resilient, and high-impact digital infrastructure. We are excited to contribute our resources and expertise to accelerate the growth of the Gonka ecosystem.”
"Bitfury’s participation is a strong validation of the model we designed - open, permissionless, and built for productive computation rather than synthetic consensus work,” said David Liberman, CTO of Product Science Inc. and co-creator of the Gonka protocol. “The support of a global infrastructure leader accelerates Gonka’s ability to bring meaningful AI computation to builders, researchers, and innovators everywhere. This is a step forward not only for our community, but for decentralized AI as a whole.”
Background on the Gonka Ecosystem
Gonka is the first among existing blockchain-based networks to be built around a Proof-of-Work mechanism designed specifically for productive computation, primarily focusing on inference. This architecture allows the community to scale shared computation resources without diverting rewards to staking participants, who are typically required to maintain Proof-of-Stake networks. In many PoS systems, more than 90% of GPU cycles are consumed by consensus tasks that produce no value beyond the blockchain itself. Gonka flips this model: nearly 100% of contributed resources are directed toward productive AI workloads, enabled by its innovative Proof-of-Work protocol. This approach maximizes efficiency and ensures that every unit of computation power contributes directly to advancing AI research and applications.
The network was fairly launched, with all control passed to an on-chain self-governed mechanism. No foundation or similar entity was established to gatekeep its evolution. This structure reflects the Gonka creators’ broader goal of ensuring that no single entity—founder, investor, or corporation—can unilaterally dictate the network’s future. At launch, the community pool was allocated 120,000,000 GNK, representing 12% of the coin’s lifetime supply - this same community pool approved Bitfury’s purchase of $12 million GNK.
About Gonka
Gonka is a decentralized network for high-efficiency AI computation, designed to maximize the use of global GPU power for meaningful AI workloads. By eliminating centralized gatekeepers, Gonka provides builders and researchers with permissionless access to computation resources while rewarding participants through its native coin, GNK. For more information, visit gonka.ai.
About The Bitfury Group
Founded in 2011, Bitfury became known as a global technology company developing solutions across blockchain, artificial intelligence, and advanced computing. Having played a pivotal role in institutionalizing Bitcoin and building the digital-asset ecosystem, Bitfury now leads a $1 billion funding initiative uniting mission-driven investors and founders — its global network of long-term partners and allies — to advance ethical, science-based technologies that strengthen human freedom and creativity. Learn more at www.bitfury.com.
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“Decentralized machine intelligence is rapidly emerging as one of the most important frontiers in AI infrastructure, and Gonka is advancing that frontier with exceptional velocity,” said Val Vavilov, CEO and co-founder of Bitfury.
