A nonprofit organization backed by cryptocurrency billionaire and founder of Ripple, Jed McCaleb bought $500 million of Nvidia’s cutting edge chips. The organization, named Voltage Park, is dedicated to providing computing capacity for AI projects on lease to various companies.

Voltage Park’s CEO, Eric Park, shared in an interview that the organization has acquired 24,000 Nvidia H100 chips, aiming to cater to the increasing demand for AI computing. The intention is to offer cost-effective, short- and long-term AI computing solutions in response to the prevailing shortage of AI chips.

Expressing the organization’s viewpoint, Park emphasized that they perceive the current machine learning ecosystem as flawed and believe there’s a pressing need for improvement.

The plan involves establishing clusters of Nvidia AI chips in multiple locations, specifically in Texas, Virginia, and Washington. While some of the chips are already operational, the complete deployment of the 24,000 Nvidia chips is expected to be achieved by approximately February, as indicated by Park.

Following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year, there has been a substantial surge in the demand for Nvidia’s sophisticated AI hardware, with companies eager to acquire these chips to power their AI initiatives. It’s worth noting that Intel, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and several startups are also selling competing AI chips that are experiencing high demand. Nvidia also announced a partnership recently to develop AI factories.

Jed McCaleb, well-known for founding prominent cryptocurrency enterprises like Mt. Gox, Ripple, and Stellar, has amassed significant wealth through his ventures. Notably, Ripple created a blockchain platform featuring a cryptocurrency known as XRP, and McCaleb and other founders received 20 billion XRP, valued at nearly $80 billion at its peak.