Last updated on May 13th, 2026 at 02:28 pm
The launch of IronClaw and the GPU marketplace follows a multi-year pivot led by NEAR co-founder Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of the landmark “Attention is All You Need” paper that pioneered Transformer models.
Throughout 2024 and 2025, NEAR Protocol ramped up its “User-Owned AI” roadmap, previously launching the NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat, which reached over 100 million users through integrations with partners like the Brave browser. In early 2026, NEAR integrated its ecosystem with the NVIDIA Inception program to refine its hardware-isolated environments and verified privacy proofs.
NEAR AI expansion
NEAR AI has expanded its Web3 infrastructure with the dual launch of IronClaw, a security-hardened AI assistant, and a decentralised confidential GPU marketplace. While IronClaw serves as a Rust-based, private alternative to existing autonomous agents, the marketplace provides the underlying hardware capacity needed to power such resource-intensive applications.
This addresses two critical bottlenecks in the industry: the risk of sensitive data leaks during AI interactions and the global shortage of high-end computing hardware. By integrating NVIDIA Confidential Computing, the new ecosystem ensures that data remains encrypted throughout the entire processing pipeline.
Today at NEARCON 2026, NEAR AI introduced two major products—IronClaw and the Confidential GPU Marketplace—alongside new multimodal and privacy capabilities.
This is the stack—confidential by design, verifiable at runtime—for building the AI economy without compromise 🧵 pic.twitter.com/dnPxhn4h7V
— NEAR AI (@near_ai) February 24, 2026
IronClaw is a new implementation of the popular OpenClaw agent, rebuilt from the ground up in the Rust programming language to prioritize security. Unlike standard AI assistants that often require broad access to a user’s machine, IronClaw executes tools within isolated WebAssembly (WASM) sandboxes.
This architecture prevents an agent from accidentally leaking private keys or exfiltrating sensitive credentials if it encounters malicious prompts. The project represents a shift toward “User-Owned AI,” where individuals maintain full control over their digital assistants without relying on centralised cloud providers who might harvest their data.
Confidential Marketplace Decentralises High-End Compute
Complementing the agent launch, the NEAR AI confidential GPU marketplace allows users to rent distributed computing power from global providers in a secure environment. The platform leverages Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) to create isolated hardware zones, ensuring that even the hardware owner cannot view the data being processed. This marketplace is a foundational component of the NEAR AI Cloud, enabling developers to scale AI model training and inference with cryptographic privacy guarantees. As the demand for AI grows, this decentralised approach offers a competitive alternative to traditional cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud.
Ironclaw’s launch provides the secure, confidential compute foundation for the next wave of autonomous AI agents. This development aligns with the broader crypto trend where new tools are moving agents past the experimental phase into executing real, income-generating financial strategies for users.
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