🤖 NEAR AI Cloud: Hardware-Verified Private AI That Could Redefine the Internet
NEAR AI launches NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat — a new standard for encrypted, verifiable, hardware-enforced AI privacy built on Intel TDX and NVIDIA Confidential Computing.
⚡ Quick Facts
- Official launch: NEAR AI Cloud & Private Chat
- Built on Intel TDX + NVIDIA Confidential Computing
- Every request runs in an encrypted, isolated hardware environment
- Each response includes cryptographic proof of integrity
- Confirmed by Illia Polosukhin: X post
- NEAR’s AI vision outlined by NEAR Protocol: official update
🔐 A New Category: Verifiable, Hardware-Encrypted AI
NEAR AI has launched NEAR AI Cloud (official link) and Private Chat, introducing a new standard for AI privacy where every request is executed inside sealed hardware using Intel TDX and NVIDIA Confidential Computing. Each response returns a cryptographic attestation proving which model was run, on what hardware, and that no tampering occurred. This directly addresses the largest blocker for AI adoption: sensitive data cannot safely leave its owner when cloud providers cannot be cryptographically verified. With NEAR AI (Illia Polosukhin) privacy stops being a policy and becomes a mathematical and hardware guarantee. According to ATH.LIVE analysts, NEAR (NEAR Protocol) is positioning itself not merely as an L1 blockchain but as a foundational infrastructure layer for confidential, AI-powered onchain applications.
🧬 Why AI Needed This Shift
AI adoption is exploding, but the most valuable data — enterprise, medical, financial, personal — remains locked away because AI APIs require sending data to opaque servers, “private modes” provide zero cryptographic guarantees, one insider or misconfiguration can break trust, and self-hosting models is expensive and complex. Traditional trust depends on contracts and certifications; NEAR AI replaces this with hardware, cryptography and math. This unlocks AI for enterprises, financial institutions, governments, healthcare systems, Web3 applications and individuals who require verifiable privacy instead of marketing claims.
⚙️ How NEAR AI Cloud Works
NEAR AI Cloud processes AI workloads through a three-step confidential pipeline. First, the user’s prompt is encrypted locally before it ever leaves their device. Second, the request runs inside a Confidential Virtual Machine (CVM) inside a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), where not even NEAR or the hardware owner can access the data or model. Third, the user receives the answer along with a cryptographic attestation proving the real hardware was used, the verified model was executed, and no tampering occurred. Developers can verify attestations via , enabling AI that can prove it respected user privacy.
💬 Private Chat: Encrypted AI Conversations
NEAR Private Chat applies the same confidential compute model to everyday AI use cases such as personal conversations, relationship questions, financial planning, business analysis and sensitive research. Unlike standard AI chats, nothing is stored, nothing is visible to NEAR, nothing is readable by the server, and all privacy guarantees are verifiable with cryptographic proofs. This makes NEAR Private Chat the first true private AI chat running in production.
🚀 Already Live in Real-World Systems
NEAR AI Cloud is already deployed in production environments including Brave Nightly, OpenMind and Phala, serving high-volume workloads, autonomous robotics, regulated industry operations and both consumer and enterprise applications. This demonstrates that NEAR AI is not theoretical infrastructure but a working confidential compute system stress-tested under real-world conditions.
🌐 Why This Matters for Crypto & DeFi
If NEAR succeeds in transforming confidential AI computation into an onchain-coordinated network, the implications are enormous: AI workloads will generate continuous demand for verification and settlement, NEAR becomes the base layer for AI + privacy + identity + memory, and every AI application gains trust, incentives and verifiable coordination. This effectively makes the NEAR token the native fuel of private AI infrastructure. ATH.LIVE analysts describe this as a practical early version of the AI-chain thesis: where other ecosystems sell AI narratives, NEAR is shipping verifiable hardware-backed infrastructure.
📈 What Comes Next
NEAR’s 2026 roadmap includes multimodal AI models (text, audio, visuals), private portable user memory, expansion toward Decentralized Confidential Machine Learning (DCML), and a full onchain-coordinated confidential compute and AI identity system. The long-term goal is to make verifiable privacy the default for every AI workload. AI without privacy is a liability; AI with verifiable privacy becomes a new economic layer. With NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat, NEAR is creating the trust foundation for the next internet — shifting from “just another blockchain” to the backbone of user-owned confidential AI.
🧩 TL;DR
- NEAR AI launches hardware-verified confidential AI Cloud & Private Chat.
- Every request executes in Intel TDX + NVIDIA CC sealed hardware.
- Each response returns cryptographic proof of integrity and privacy.
- Already live in Brave Nightly, OpenMind and Phala.
- NEAR is evolving into foundational AI infrastructure, not just an L1 blockchain.
- ATH.LIVE: NEAR is now competing with AWS, Google Cloud and OpenAI’s closed systems.
