Acurast Secures $5.4M to Build a Smartphone-Powered Decentralized Cloud
Acurast raises $5.4M to scale its decentralized cloud network using smartphones, promoting verifiable and energy-efficient compute.
Swiss-based Web3 infrastructure firm Acurast has raised $5.4 million to accelerate its vision of a decentralized cloud computing ecosystem powered by smartphones. The fundraising round, finalized on May 22 at a token price of $0.09, grants the project a fully diluted valuation of $90 million. In a bid to encourage broad community participation, the public token sale imposed a minimum investment of $100 and capped individual allocations at $2 million.
At the heart of Acurast’s model is the concept of repurposing idle computing power from personal smartphones to perform decentralized cloud tasks. This network—currently boasting over 72,000 active devices—has already enabled more than 256 million transactions, making it, according to Acurast, the most decentralized computing infrastructure to date.
"Most of the newly raised capital will be used to enhance our protocol, which continues proving that compute can be verifiable, confidential, energy-efficient, and truly decentralized, powered by the phones in our pockets," said Alessandro De Carli, President of the Board and Co-Founder of Acurast.
The ACU token plays a central role in Acurast’s architecture, facilitating not only payment and incentivization mechanisms but also encouraging stakeholder participation. It empowers users to contribute computing resources while earning rewards, thereby reinforcing the network’s resilience and scalability.
The rise of decentralized cloud computing challenges the current dominance of centralized giants such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, whose infrastructure depends on multi-billion-dollar data centers. In contrast, Acurast's lightweight, device-centric model democratizes access to cloud resources, particularly in under-resourced regions where traditional infrastructure is limited.
Beyond scalability and cost-efficiency, Acurast emphasizes verifiability, confidentiality, and sustainability—cornerstones in a digital economy increasingly sensitive to privacy and environmental concerns. The platform also positions itself as a key enabler of blockchain-based infrastructure and decentralized artificial intelligence, aligning with broader trends in the decentralized physical infrastructure (DePIN) movement.
As interest in decentralized compute solutions grows, Acurast’s latest funding round marks a pivotal moment for the sector, illustrating the potential of mobile-first Web3 technologies to redefine cloud services from the ground up.
