0G

0G Labs was founded in 2023 by Michael Heinrich, Ming Wu, Fan Long and Thomas Yao to merge storage, data availability and compute into a modular L1 where AI work can be verified and priced. It raised a $35 million pre-seed in March 2024 and a $40 million seed that November.

In November 2024 the 0G Foundation also secured a $250 million token purchase commitment. The Aristotle mainnet and 0G token launched on September 22, 2025, claiming about 11,000 TPS, more than 100 day-one partners including Chainlink, Google Cloud and Alibaba Cloud, and an $88.88 million ecosystem fund.

The token then slid for months. In May 2026 0G cut roughly a quarter of staff to become 'AI-native', and in July it launched an Internet Court with GenLayer and other partners to arbitrate agent disputes on-chain - an ambitious mechanism with little real usage so far.

On September 21, 2026 it introduced Compute Finance: stake 0G for a0G, mint iAI, stake it and earn compute credits. Public minting opened on September 29 and over 3,800 iAI were minted within seven hours, while 0G's daily DEX volume hit a record $3.9 million.

On October 5, 2026, 0G said it would invest at least S$20 million in Singapore over five years and base its global headquarters there, expanding research ties with NTU. Yet 0G trades near $0.31, more than 95% below its $7.05 peak, with unlocks still weighing on supply.

Unlock delayed by a year: In late September, the team announced that the first unlock of team and early-investor tokens - 44% of total supply - would be pushed from October 22, 2026 to October 22, 2027, with vesting compressed from 36 to 24 months (ending September 2029); an earlier June unlock had seen the price fall 23.8% within 10 days.

Compute Finance launch: On September 24 it rolled out the Ascend liquid staking product (stake 0G to receive a0G), and on September 29 launched Infinite AI (iAI); staking iAI yields AI compute credits designed to be worth over $1 per day, tying token utility to compute consumption.

In February 2026 the 0G foundation validator (Validator 0) migrated from Geth to the Rust-based Reth, and on March 13 the network-wide validator execution migration was announced alongside Sealed Inference, which cryptographically verifies each inference inside a TEE, and the addition of GLM-5 to decentralised inference; on March 17, during GTC 2026, 0G highlighted 2 GB/s storage throughput and data availability 50,000 times faster and 100 times cheaper than Ethereum's.

The 0G network reports more than 100 ecosystem partners including Chainlink, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Coinbase Wallet, $290 million in total funding from Hack VC, Delphi Digital, OKX Ventures, Samsung Next and Animoca Brands among others, and a $20 million Apollo accelerator; the 0G mainnet claims about 11,000 TPS while carrying storage, compute and data availability on one stack. Future strategy and roadmap: 0G will make decentralised inference the verifiable default, keep raising execution throughput with Reth and expand GPU supply; next, monetise agent payments, model marketplaces and enterprise sealed inference, packaging compute, storage and DA into an operating system for AI applications.

0G sells a verifiable private AI cloud rather than a chain: Reth aligns the execution layer with upstream, the GPU marketplace attests inference in TEEs, and storage and data availability are billed together, with the pitch to enterprises being up to 95% cheaper than closed models. What backs the pitch is the validator set — Google Cloud, NTT Digital, CertiK and Hex Trust among operators staking roughly 390 million 0G — lending compliance and operational credibility to the network. Running its own 0GM-1.0-35B-A3B alongside GLM-5 shows it wants a hand in the model layer rather than reselling compute. The rivals are centralised clouds, which win on SLAs, and networks such as Bittensor, which win on token subsidies; 0G has to prove per-call sealed inference can beat both.

Michael Heinrich, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, holds a bachelor's degree from UC Berkeley and a master's in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University; he was a consultant at Bain and worked on portfolio construction at Bridgewater, founded Garten in 2014 and co-founded 0G in 2023.

Ming Wu, co-founder and Chief Technology Officer, began his career researching distributed systems and storage and spent over a decade at Microsoft Research Asia before co-founding Conflux Network; he now leads the modular storage and compute architecture.

Fan Long, co-founder and Chief Strategy and Security Officer, graduated from Tsinghua University's Yao Class and holds a PhD in Computer Science from MIT; he is an associate professor at the University of Toronto and co-founded Conflux in 2018.

Thomas Yao, co-founder and Chief Business Officer, comes from a physics background, worked on autonomous driving research at the University of Michigan and co-founded IMO Ventures at Stanford; he now handles business strategy and ecosystem growth.

Arne Hartmann, Chief Financial Officer, holds a master's degree from Stanford Business School and previously worked in global growth investing at General Atlantic; he now runs financial strategy, capital planning and scaling operations.