{
  "id": 3111879,
  "title": "Conjure cash with old Macs by linking them to AI inference Borg",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/conjure-cash-with-old-macs-by-linking-them-to-ai-inference-borg-3111879",
  "topic": "ai",
  "section": "AI",
  "published": "2026-08-24T19:40:22.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Register",
    "slug": "the-register",
    "url": "https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/08/24/conjure-cash-with-old-macs-by-linking-them-to-ai-inference-borg/5292002"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Eigen Labs, a Seattle-based tech company, estimates Apple Silicon device owners can earn $120 to $200 monthly by renting out idle compute power for AI inference. Gajesh Naik, an engineer at Eigen Labs, announced the Darkbloom project, a network of Apple Silicon devices, as a paid inference provider on OpenRouter. Currently, 250 Mac machines are online in the network, with users earning $120-200 per month per machine. Suitable devices include Mac mini, M1 MacBook Pro, and other Apple Silicon-equipped macOS devices.\n\nThe Darkbloom software is installed on a personal device, bypassing privacy risks associated with AI inference on someone else's hardware. A Swift process handles the inference engine, running on the Apple Silicon GPU via mlx-swift-lm, without subprocesses, local servers, or inter-process communication. The process is hardened, preventing external access to its memory and ensuring confidentiality.\n\nInference requests are sent over HTTPS to a Go-based coordinator in a Confidential VM, routing the request to an inference provider running the Swift CLI. The provider decrypts the inference job within a Secure Enclave, runs the inference on the Apple Silicon GPU, and re-encrypts the plaintext for the selected provider. The privacy model is akin to Apple's Private Cloud Compute, but applied to a distributed network.\n\nInitially launched as a free service on OpenRouter, Darkbloom now charges for its services. The top-paying model is Qwen 3.6 35B A3B at $399 per month, followed by GPT-OSS 20B at $52, and Gemma 4 26B at $27. Earnings vary, with top earners averaging $26/day, $19/day, and $15/day, respectively. Network participants can expect to earn between $192 and $4,983 annually, factoring in estimated electricity costs.",
  "summary": "Darkbloom distributed inference network promises to put underutilized Apple kit to work",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 2,
    "also_reported_by": [
      {
        "outlet": "The Register Science",
        "title": "Conjure cash with old Macs by linking them to AI inference Borg",
        "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/24/conjure-cash-with-old-macs-by-linking-them-to-ai-inference-borg",
        "published": "2026-08-24T19:40:22.000Z"
      }
    ]
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}