The AI revolution is colliding head-on with a massive infrastructure bottleneck, as a handful of hyperscalers hoard the lion's share of global compute power and leave startups scrambling for scraps. Jack Collier, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer for io.net, argues that the solution isn't building more data centers, but rather tapping into decentralized networks that aggregate the 85% of global compute capacity currently sitting idle. By breaking free from restrictive volume licensing traps and embracing distributed open-source models, organizations can not only slash their inference costs but also reclaim their data sovereignty before big tech monopolies swallow it whole.