Developer Compute Labs Solana brush
-7.35%
The GPU tokenization protocol raises $3 million in a pre-seed funding round.
Protocol Labs, the company behind the decentralized file storage network Filecoin 
Phil
-6.58%
Compute Labs said Wednesday that it led the funding round. Other investors include Blockchain Coinvestors, OKX Ventures, CMS Holdings, HashKey Capital, Amber Group, and P2 Ventures (formerly polygon 
Matic
-6.74%
Ventures). Angel investors including Polygon’s Sandeep Nailwal and Illia Polosukhin. 
near
-7.29%
Protocol and Solana Foundation’s Austin Federra also participated in this round.
Compute Labs began raising funds for its pre-seed round in March, the year it was founded, and closed the round in April, founder and CEO Albert Z told The Block. Z added that the round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens, or SAFT, and brought Compute Labs’ fully diluted token value to $30 million.
Z added that Compute Labs is currently raising a seed round at a “significantly higher” valuation, and that the company was oversubscribed by more than twice its pre-seed round funding amount.
What is Compute Labs?
Compute Labs is building a real-world asset (RWA) tokenization protocol that focuses on computing as its underlying asset. Compute refers to the processing power of CPUs and GPUs that are essential for tasks such as data processing and software execution. Z has called computing one of the most valuable commodities today, and especially in the era of artificial intelligence, “the currency of the future.”
He said most retail investors today can’t invest in enterprise-grade GPUs, adding that Compute Labs will make computing “inclusive for everyone.”
Z said that by tokenizing computing, the protocol will allow users to purchase high-performance GPUs, such as the NVIDIA H100, via GPU-NFTs (GNFTs). GNFTs are SPL22 tokens, a hybrid token of Solana that is both non-fungible and fungible, Z said. Holders of GNFTs will have ownership and transfer rights to those GPUs, Z added.
Z said that the pre-sale of GNFT will start this month and will last for several weeks. He added that the public sale will also start after the pre-sale.
Computing Protocol and Token Launch Schedule
The Compute protocol is currently live on the Solana testnet and is scheduled to launch on the Solana mainnet this month. The protocol’s native token is also expected to launch in Q3 or Q4 of this year, Z said.
The protocol was initially launched on Solana, but Z said it will expand to other blockchains in the future, including NEAR and Monad.
Headquartered in Los Angeles and Seattle, Compute Labs currently employs five people, and Z is looking to hire more across a range of functions including engineering, marketing and operations.
Compute Labs claims to have been incubated by the NVIDIA Inception VC Alliance, NVIDIA’s program designed to support and accelerate startups leveraging AI, data science, and high-performance computing.
Z said the NVIDIA Inception VC Alliance will provide Compute Labs with cost savings, discounted GPU supply, launch support, and direct conversations with NVIDIA business units and OEMs.
Block reached out to NVIDIA Inception VC Alliance for comment, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
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