Canadian digital asset mining company Hive Digital has signaled its intention to turn to artificial intelligence (AI) following the announcement of a layoff.
The company announced that it will remove the "blockchain" tag from its name to reflect the expanded scope of its operations. Going forward, the company will be known as Hive Digital Technologies Ltd (TSXV: HIVE | OTCQX: HVBTF | FSE: HBF) to pursue new "income opportunities".
In its statement, Hive said it will put more emphasis on cloud computing technology by using its Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) to explore AI applications. Despite dropping "blockchain" from its name, the company notes that the push toward AI development is ultimately designed to "support the new Web3 ecosystem."
"As we grow our Cloud GPU business, we need a strategy that better reflects both sides of our business," said Aydin Kilic, CEO of Hive. “We are building infrastructure for emerging digital technologies, not just blockchain, and we intend to use our large fleet of GPUs to grow a cloud hosting business.”
HIVE says the name change will not affect its current investments in BTC mining, but it will affect 38,000 Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) GPUs for compute tasks. Kilic justifies the expansion by saying that the rampant developments in AI "will lead to significant demand for GPU computing in the future".
Hive plans to expand into renting clusters of GPU servers called Hive Cloud to compete with offerings from major cloud service providers.
Executive Chairman Frank Holmes noted that a foray into GPU computing could provide Hive with annual revenue in excess of $100,000,000. The company is banking on the sky-high adoption metrics of generative AI platforms such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard (NASDAQ:GOOGL).
Just two months after the launch of ChatGPT, the offering has attracted over 100 million users, making it the "fastest growing technology product of all time".
In January, block reward mining company Riot Blockchain changed its name to Riot Platform as it sought to diversify its operations.
Amid the growing adoption of AI platforms, technology companies are rolling out new products to support innovation in the ecosystem. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has unveiled a new MI300X AI Accelerator chip designed to snatch market share from Nvidia.
At present, Taiwan produces the bulk of the chips needed by OpenAI to develop its large language models (LLMs), but the firm has confirmed its search for new suppliers to meet growing demand.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said his company intends to invest in South Korean startups building AI infrastructure while China puts a cap on the raw materials needed to manufacture semi- drivers.
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