Exo: running AI on your own hardware instead of their data centers

A startup called Exo is building software that lets you rent out spare compute on your own machines — laptops, desktops, even phones — and use that pool to run AI inference. It works by splitting models across devices and stitching the results back together. The pitch: you don't need to ship everything to a massive data center when the capacity is already sitting idle on people's desks.

The idea isn't new — peer-to-peer compute has been floated for years — but the economics finally make sense with modern LLMs. Most of the cost of running a model is the GPU; if you can spread a single inference across a dozen machines that are already turned on, the per-request cost drops and the owner of each machine gets paid. It's the cousin-hustle model scaled up.

Why this matters for us: la gente already has the hardware sitting around — tías with old MacBooks, abuelos with gaming PCs — and right now it's just collecting dust. This opens a real side income for anyone with a plugged-in machine, and it means less reliance on the big cloud providers that price out small operations and independent workers.