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Jonathan Schemoul is the co-founder and CEO of Aleph Cloud, formerly Aleph.im, a decentralized cloud infrastructure platform based in France.
He began as a software developer and project manager, and later became a community developer at NULS Blockchain, where he built a block explorer, Python and JavaScript SDKs and several dApps. He said he started Aleph.im after seeing, as an open source developer, that a layer one chain alone could not decentralize the whole application stack. Aleph.im launched in 2019 and was first known as a decentralized indexing provider for Solana.
It has since grown into a full-stack cloud platform covering storage, compute, virtual machines and GPU resources. Schemoul led the April 2025 rebrand to Aleph Cloud and the launch of a $1 million startup accelerator. His current focus is confidential computing, decentralized AI infrastructure and censorship-resistant alternatives to centralized cloud providers, including work with the LibertAI project.
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Latest interview · Feb 12, 2025Aleph Cloud and LibertAI challenge centralized AIWatch the episode →
Key points
- Aleph Cloud is a decentralized cloud computing network running on community nodes instead of centralized data centers like AWS or Google Cloud.
- Confidential computing on Aleph Cloud uses industry-standard trusted execution environments that prevent node operators from viewing data inside virtual machines.
- LibertAI provides confidential LLM inference with end-to-end encryption between users and the decentralized network runners, unlike centralized providers.
- LLM inference is memory-intensive and runs on GPUs in data centers, with user queries and responses passing through the model without permanent storage.
- Confidential virtual machines on Aleph Cloud cost less than standard VMs on AWS while providing enhanced privacy protections.
In their own words
“There is no such thing as the cloud, really; it's only other people's computers.”
“It won't only be money. It will be all the big companies, all the big computing and storage consumers moving to decentralized networks.”
“Open source wins, and since open source wins, local AI, decentralized AI and confidential AI win as well.”
“Aleph is not a blockchain. It's a peer-to-peer network that speaks the languages of blockchains.”
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