Crypto juggernaut Tether is taking aim at Big Tech’s centralized AI dominance with “QVAC,” a new platform that it claims will let developers run and evolve AI agents directly on personal devices—no data centers required. If you think this is the stuff of sci-fi, you’re right: QVAC, short for QuantumVerse Automatic Computer, takes its name from the AI in Isaac Asimov’s 1956 short story, “The Last Question.” In the story, a self-evolving computer named Multivac transforms over time into a god-like being, endlessly seeking a way to stop entropy—until it finally succeeds.
If halting entropy is on the roadmap, then Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino didn’t say so Wednesday when he tweeted new details about QVAC. Ardoino first announced that Tether was pursuing a decentralized approach to AI earlier this month. Today, he elaborated, noting that QVAC is designed to run cloudless AI entirely on devices—from smartphones to brain-computer interfaces—with an open-source software development kit planned to be released later this year.
