#340 Steffen Cruz: Training AI Without Data Centres
From Eye On A.I. by Craig S. Smith
April 29, 2026 · 46 min · Episode 340
About this episode
Steffen Cruz discusses a revolutionary approach to training AI models without traditional data centres by utilizing distributed computing resources.
What if you could train a frontier AI model without building a single data centre? In this episode of Eye on AI, Craig Smith sits down with Steffen Cruz, co-founder and CTO of Macrocosmos, to explore a radical alternative to the way AI models are built today. Instead of billion-dollar GPU warehouses, Steffen is training large language models using idle compute from devices distributed around the world, coordinated through the Bittensor blockchain. Steffen breaks down why the centralised data centre model is heading toward a wall. Projects like Stargate and Colossus cost tens of billions of dollars, and as appetite for larger models grows, the economics simply stop making sense. He explains how distributed training flips this on its head, tapping into surplus energy, underutilised GPUs, and even consumer devices like Mac Minis to train models at a fraction of the cost. We also get into IOTA, Macrocosmos's flagship technology, an orchestration layer that takes compute nodes scattered across the globe and makes them act like a single supercomputer. No single device runs the full model. Instead, each one carries a small slice, a technique called model parallelism, and together they…
People in this episode
Host: Craig S. Smith
Guest: Steffen Cruz
Topics covered
- AI training
- distributed computing
- blockchain technology
- cost-effective AI
- model parallelism
- surplus energy utilization
Keywords
- AI models
- distributed training
- GPU
- compute nodes
- energy efficiency
- language models
- centralized costs
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Macrocosmos, Bittensor, IOTA
Products: Stargate, Colossus
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