ByteNova (formerly ClustroAI) has announced that it has secured a fresh round of funding, bringing its total amount raised to $15 million USD. Investors include NVIDIA, a16z, Forum Ventures, MetaBlast, Metaverse Group, CoinMarketCap Labs, and a number of other institutional supporters.
With this financial runway, ByteNova is accelerating the build-out of a distributed AI ecosystem centered on real users, real ownership, and practical, real-world applications. The funding marks a major milestone in ByteNova’s mission to bring intelligent, privacy-preserving AI directly onto everyday devices.
With demand for fast, privacy-preserving on-device AI surging as consumers and developers increasingly seek alternatives to cloud-dependent intelligence, ByteNova is accelerating the deployment of powerful, efficient AI across consumer hardware, paving the way for more secure, responsive, and accessible AI experiences.
ByteNova’s core technology centers on a lightweight, containerized engine that allows AI models, from LLMs to speech and multimodal tools, to run directly on local hardware. This gives users faster response times, keeps sensitive data on their own devices, and dramatically reduces dependence on cloud infrastructure.
For developers, ByteNova provides a simple framework to create AI agents that can interact with desktop environments, apps, and Web3 workflows without needing server-heavy setups. Tasks that once required cloud APIs can now happen locally, making AI both easier to build and safer to use.
NVIDIA has consistently pushed the industry toward device-level AI. ByteNova’s approach reflects this shift by treating everyday GPUs, NPUs, CPUs and other edge hardware as active intelligence hubs rather than passive processors.
“Our goal is to make AI feel immediate, personal, and user-owned,” said Chris Anderson, Co-founder of ByteNova. “By running intelligence directly on devices and connecting them through Web3, we give people AI that responds faster, protects their data, and truly belongs to them, but not to a centralized platform.”
As ByteNova continues expanding its ecosystem, its roadmap centers on three clear priorities. First, making AI simple to manage by enabling users to update or switch models as effortlessly as updating an app, without complex setup or cloud infrastructure. Second, connecting user devices into an intelligent, community-driven network that shares and coordinates local compute without relying on centralized servers. Third, bringing edge AI capabilities to a wider range of devices to extend the reach and impact of decentralized intelligence.
N.O.V.A, ByteNova’s flagship desktop companion, is optimized for PCs today, with upcoming expansion toward mobile devices and smart home environments as the ecosystem grows.
Together, these efforts point toward a future where intelligent agents live alongside users, adapt to their routines, and interact with the digital world on their behalf, all without sacrificing speed or privacy.
ByteNova envisions a world where intelligent agents operate directly alongside users, running on laptops today and eventually expanding to mobile devices and smart home systems, without relying on centralized cloud infrastructure. The company is moving toward a scalable, privacy-preserving, and cost-efficient decentralized AI ecosystem that puts users in control of their own intelligence.
