AlphaTON expands exposure to decentralized Telegram-based Cocoon AI with NVIDIA deal

TON token treasury AlphaTON Capital Corp (Nasdaq: ATON) has signed a $46 million compute infrastructure deal to expand its fleet of chips as it looks to scale the decentralized, Telegram-native Cocoon AI network.

“AlphaTON is pioneering a new category in artificial intelligence: providing privacy-preserving, decentralized AI infrastructure deployed at scale through its integration with Telegram’s ecosystem and Cocoon AI’s groundbreaking confidential compute network,” the company wrote in a statement on Monday.

The deal will add 576 NVIDIA B300 chips, representing the “company’s first large-scale confidential compute deployment,” to AlphaTON’s books, building on its existing $20 million in assets on its balance sheet. The chips are scheduled for delivery next month in February.

Like other AI deals, the arrangement is not a simple cash transaction. According to the announcement, AlphaTON has already contributed $4 million in cash to close the deal, and has financed the rest through $32.7 million of closed non-recourse debt financing, and an additional $9.3 million in equity across small installments paid by full deployment in March.

Telegram’s Confidential Compute Open Network (Cocoon) is a decentralized AI compute platform developed by Telegram and built on the TON blockchain that is core to AlphaTON’s business model as a digital asset treasury. The firm previously announced that it would deploy a fleet of GPUs to Cocoon, “adding a new revenue stream to its business.”

In December, Alphaton filed for a $420.69 million shelf registration in part to fund its AI expansion, as well as other Toncoin initiatives, like investments in the TON mini-app economy and co-branded TON Mastercard.

Cocoon pays users in Toncoin for renting out their GPUs to process user queries and offers end users a greater amount of privacy than larger players like Google’s Gemini or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Telegram has about 1 billion monthly active users who could be potential adopters for Cocoon.

“While the broader market remains volatile, AlphaTON has systematically de-risked our capital structure by adding physical compute assets, strategic partnerships, and revenue-generating infrastructure,” AlphaTON Capital CIO Enzo Villani said in a statement. “Our balance sheet today represents not just capital preservation, but offensive positioning for the AI infrastructure supercycle ahead.”

AlphaTON kicked off its TON treasury program in September after closing a $36.2 million private placement and securing a $35 million loan facility from BitGo Prime. The firm said it aimed to purchase approximately $100 million worth of TON tokens and invest in the mini app ecosystem.

Many big-name investors are also backers of The Open Platform, developer of the Toncoin chain, or TON Foundation, including Benchmark, CoinFund, Draper Associates, Sequoia Capital, and Skybridge. Pantera Capital has made several investments in Toncoin, one of which was described as its largest-ever investment in 2024.