Decentralized finance (DeFi) is awash with stablecoins earning government returns, while smaller players in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry scramble to raise capital to expand data centers with new GPUs.
A new stablecoin protocol called USD.AI wants to bridge this gap by turning crypto’s idle liquidity into loans for the machines that train and operate artificial intelligence.
The protocol, which now has about $345 million in circulation, according to a Dune Dashboard, backs its synthetic dollar with short-term credit tied to NVIDIA GPUs housed in data centers leased to AI developers.
These GPUs generate revenue by selling computational time for model training and inference, with the cash flow servicing the debt that finances them. Lenders earn returns from these repayments rather than from token issuances, while borrowers gain access to specialized financing that would exceed the risk appetite of most retail lenders.
USD.AI’s structure rests on three interlocking mechanisms designed to make the real world work on the chain.
The first, CALIBER, is the legal and technical bridge between a physical GPU and its on-chain representation. Each GPU funded through the protocol is stored in an insured data center and documented under US commercial law, then tokenized as a non-fungible token (NFT) representing a legally enforceable claim to that hardware.
Loans are issued against these tokenized receipts, allowing capital raised on-chain to finance off-chain equipment with actual security behind it. The next layer, the FiLo curator, handles underwriting.
Curators originate and manage GPU loans while posting their own capital at first loss, meaning they absorb any initial defaults before lenders are affected. This structure decentralizes credit creation but keeps incentives aligned: Curators only profit when their borrowers perform.
The last component, QEV, which stands for queue extractable value, controls liquidity. Instead of offering instant withdrawals, the system queues up redemption requests, making time a market.
Users who wait are gradually repaid from monthly borrower repayments, while those who need to finish sooner can pay a premium to move up. That premium compensates patient lenders and preserves the solvency of the loan book.
The current yield for staked sUSDai ranges between 13% and 17%, supported by repayments from GPU operators rather than issuances or leverage loops.
USD.AI’s backers describe it as a prototype for a broader “InfraFi” model, decentralized infrastructure financing that could one day be extended to renewable energy projects or decentralized computer networks.
For now, its success hinges on a more immediate question: whether the economics of GPU leasing—a proxy for AI demand—can remain strong enough to keep those repayments afloat.
If they do, USD.AI could become DeFi’s first large-scale bridge between onchain capital and the real machinery behind artificial intelligence.
