SAN FRANCISCO, CA – January 20, 2025 – Theta Labs, a global leader in decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI, media, and entertainment, announces that Michigan State University (MSU) will be adopting its EdgeCloud platform for AI research, joining University of Oregon in the US as the second academia customer. MSU’s Secure and Intelligent Things (SEIT) Lab, directed by Associate Professor Qiben Yan, will leverage Theta’s advanced decentralized GPU infrastructure to drive innovation in AI, cybersecurity, and distributed systems.
As a major Tier 1 research institution, Michigan State University adds a new dimension to Theta Labs’ academic collaborations in the US. Theta is expanding its US cloud-based GPU infrastructure with locations in California, Texas and the Midwest. In June 2025, the company will also release the Beta of its fully hybrid cloud-edge computing platform, incorporating an edge network of over 30,000 edge nodes operated by community members globally. The US and North America account for nearly one-third of these nodes, providing significant synergy to US-based customers.
About Professor Qiben Yan and the SEIT Lab
Professor Qiben Yan, the director of MSU’s Secure and Intelligent Things (SEIT) Lab, is a renowned expert in IoT security, AI privacy, blockchain resilience, and cybersecurity. His lab conducts pioneering research on safeguarding connected devices, systems, and networks from advanced cyber threats. Professor Yan’s work has been featured in top conferences, including USENIX Security, ACM CCS, and IEEE TIFS, and his projects have earned prestigious funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The SEIT Lab specializes in developing secure, intelligent systems for IoT and AI applications, with an emphasis on distributed systems, federated learning, and blockchain-powered platforms. Recent achievements include an NSF-funded project on adversarially robust AI for speech recognition and groundbreaking research on secure transaction frameworks for smart contracts. Prof. Yan’s leadership has positioned the SEIT Lab as a hub for innovative solutions in cybersecurity and decentralized computing.
Overview of the ClearAI system, showcasing voice conversion module for creating parallel datasets, predictive model for style transfer, and speech restoration for enhancing hypophonic speech quality and intelligibility.
Advancing AI and Blockchain Research
By adopting Theta EdgeCloud, the SEIT Lab gains access to a decentralized cloud platform that enables efficient training and deployment of AI models. EdgeCloud reduces the time required to spin up GPU resources by up to 5x compared to traditional cloud providers, accelerating research in secure AI, federated learning, and blockchain-powered systems.
This partnership strengthens Theta’s growing academic network, which includes top-tier universities in the United States, China and South Korea. These collaborations underscore Theta’s commitment to supporting academic research tackling complex challenges in media, healthcare, bioinformatics, and finance.
Quotes
Professor Qiben Yan:
“Theta has gotten significant customer traction in Asia with some of the top South Korean universities like KAIST and Seoul National. They’re our respected peers in the academic circle and we’re excited to have SEIT Lab join Theta EdgeCloud’s platform. We believe that EdgeCloud can help us scale various AI projects that require high-performance computing cost efficiently. We think in the long-term this will help us push the boundaries of decentralized technology as we expand research in secure, intelligent systems for IoT and AI applications.”
Mitch Liu, co-founder and CEO of Theta Labs:
“Thrilled to welcome Michigan State University and SEIT Lab to Theta EdgeCloud. Professor Qiben Yan’s lab joins University of Oregon and other US university labs to leverage EdgeCloud for computational intensive AI research. Theta is already the de-facto leader in decentralized cloud GPU computing in Asia with 8 of the top 10 South Korea universities as customers. We expect US academia to come aboard and adopt EdgeCloud aggressively in 2025.”
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About Theta Labs
Theta Labs is the leading provider of decentralized cloud infrastructure for AI, media and entertainment powered by a global network of 30,000 distributed edge nodes and a native blockchain. Backed by Samsung, Sony, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments and Creative Artists Agency, Theta is among the top 10 DePIN blockchains by market capitalization on Coingecko and top AI tokens on Binance.com, Recently launched Theta EdgeCloud is the first hybrid cloud-edge computing AI platform with over 80 PetaFLOPS of on-demand distributed GPU compute power. Theta’s enterprise validator and governance council is composed of global market leaders, including Google, Samsung, CAA, and Binance.
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