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You can't invest in Cursor or Databricks yet, but there IS a way that everyday people can throw some of their own cash behind AI projects in which they really believe. Just as open-source AI models are giving users more freedom than chatbots locked away behind walled gardens, decentralized AI allows retail investors to own a small piece of this exciting wave of innovation.
This is educational content, not investment advice
What is Decentralized AI?
Whether you side with Anthropic, OpenAI, or the Department of War, it's increasingly clear that major decisions about AI technology and how it's developed are being made by a handful of elites at the top levels of the tech industry and/or government.
Many feel that the responsibility to shape and guide such an civilization-shifting technology should rest with a distributed network of people, rather than a single tech company, cloud provider, or government agency.
This is the core notion behind Decentralized AI, which describes systems that distribute the compute, data, and models that power AI across many participants instead of single entities or groups.
How Bittensor Fits In
As of March 2026, Bittensor is one of the most concrete examples of decentralized AI put into real practice.
It's a network running on a blockchain (just like a cryptocurrency would) that's called Subtensor. This blockchain is based on “proof-of-intelligence,” and it keeps track of everything going on in the network.
It's divided into specialized workspaces known as “subnets,” which power various AI projects, apps, and tools. (Examples include everything from video compression, chatbots, writing code, even discovering new drugs.) There are a total of 128 subnets on the blockchain.
Many of these subnets currently power working AI apps and products. “Hash Rate” host and @stillcorecap co-founder @markjeffrey shared some of his favorite subnets with us on a recent TWiST. They include:
Ridges: Open source, self-improving coding assistant agents, serving as a lower-cost but still powerful alternative to frontier models like Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex.
Targon: Another “private AI” solution like our recent guests @AskVenice, they provide “confidential” cloud compute.
Hippius: Decentralized and transparent storage on virtual machines in the cloud, providing a transparent and impossible to censor alternative to AWS or Google Cloud.
So unlike Bitcoin, where mining involves using a lot of computer power to solve random math equations, in order to develop artificial scarcity, Bittensor mining powers AI development and innovation, new models that can power real-world projects and solve actual problems.
So How Do People Potentially Make Money From This?
The whole thing works like a mini-economy, based around a crypto token known as $TAO.
There are three basic “roles” that participants can take within this network:
Miners: They create and deploy different models that drive different AI products and services, like ones listed above. They earn TAO based on scores from validators.
Validators: They evaluate and score the models, plus stake TAO to drive the economy.
Subnet Owners: They spend TAO to register new subnets and set the rules for those applications.
Subnets all receive “emissions” of TAO that function a bit like startup capital, helping the projects to grow.
NOTE: Subnets can become “deregistered” over time if they don't perform. Not all 128 subnets are equally profitable or active.
Dynamic TAO and Subnet Tokens
Over time, a small group of core validators accumulated a lot of control over the flow of these TAO emissions. Which sort of contradicts the original, decentralized mission!
The solution was Dynamic Tao (dTAO), which launched in late 2024 and early 2025. This change turns each subnet (and thus each individual AI project) into its own market.
Each subnet has two liquidity reserves: TAO and its own subnet token. The price is determined by the ratio of TAO and its own token in its reserves. So when you stake into a particular subnet, you're swapping your TAO for that subnet's token. The more demand for a subnet token, the higher the price, and thus the more TAO gets sent their way.
Here's How to Buy In
If you've heard enough (this is NOT financial advice) and want to take the plunge, it's actually not super difficult to get started.
Buying TAO, at this point, is straight-forward. It's listed on major crypto exchanges including Kraken and Coinbase, and can be purchased like any other mainstream crypto token. TAO is trading at around $185 this week, with a market cap of around $1.5 billion.
Buying subnet tokens is a bit more complex. Here's the process broken into simple steps.
(1) Buy some TAO
(2) Find a subnet you believe in, that offers a compelling service or product
(3) Find a validator operating on that subnet.
Remember, validators are the individuals that evaluate the quality of the miners' AI outputs. You can find a validator on any number of community-built dashboards. Some examples are TaoStats and TAO.app.
It's important to bear in mind that not all validators are created equal! You want to find one who scores miners accurately and participates actively. It's more like choosing a fund manager than a stock.
(4) Send your TAO into the subnet's AMM (Automated Market Maker) pool. This is its liquidity pool, where the TAO and subnet tokens are stored. Your TAO will be converted here into the subnet's alpha token.
You can do this through the dashboard at a site like TaoStats, or directly through your computer's terminal, if you install the Bittensor CLI tool. Run this command:
This will show you the subnet, and a list of available validators along with their stake, emissions, and hotkey addresses. It will also show you the exchange rate between your TAO and that subnet's token.
(5) Delegate your alpha tokens to your selected validator's hotkey. This means the validator is now staking the token on your behalf and your rewards are now tied to theirs.
If this sounds complicated, there IS an alternative! @CrucibleLabs has introduced the Crucible Wallet, a Chrome extension that invests your TAO across the top 20 subnets by price, each day. They use a process called the Smart Allocator to make this work.
It's more convenient, saving you from having to track down your own validators and engage with the blockchain directly. But it's also lower risk. Your TAO remains as TAO; only your rewards get re-deployed as subnet tokens.
Owning a Piece of the AI Revolution
Bittensor and TAO can sound a bit intimidating at first. But in a world where AI innovators like OpenAI, Anthropic, Cerebras, Perplexity, xAI, Databricks, Scale AI, and other market leaders remain private, this is a potentially viable way for everyday investors to get some real exposure to these advancements.
$10 Million to Mine an Asteroid. $105 Million if it Works.
