Our Mission

Mission Statement

AI Horde is a free, community-powered service that provides open access to generative AI. We are a volunteer-run, non-profit effort dedicated to ensuring that powerful machine learning technologies remain available to all people, regardless of their financial means, geographic location, or technical resources. We believe that when people freely share what they have, everyone gains more than any one person gives up.

Why We Exist

Generative AI is among the most transformative technologies of our time. It is reshaping how people create art, write, learn, conduct research, and solve problems. But running these models demands expensive hardware: powerful GPUs that most people simply cannot afford. Left to market forces alone, access to these capabilities concentrates in the hands of well-funded corporations and the individuals wealthy enough to pay for subscriptions.

We reject the premise that your economic circumstances should determine whether you can use these tools. A student in Lagos deserves the same access to AI-assisted learning as a developer in San Francisco. An independent artist should not be priced out of creative tools that could transform their work. A researcher at an underfunded university should not have to choose between their budget and their curiosity.

AI Horde was built to break that pattern. In the tradition of volunteer computing projects like Folding@home and SETI@home, we connect people who have spare computing power with people who need it. The result is a distributed cluster that belongs to no single entity, a shared resource sustained by collective generosity.

The Power of Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing only works when people are willing to give without guaranteed return. Every volunteer who runs a worker is choosing to spend their own electricity, wear on their own hardware, and dedicate their own time, not for payment, but because they believe others should have access to these tools too.

This is not a business model. It is an act of solidarity. The volunteers who power AI Horde come from all over the world, united by a shared conviction that technology should serve people, not extract from them. Some run workers around the clock. Others contribute during off-hours when their machines would otherwise sit idle. All of them make the service possible.

The kudos system ensures fairness without introducing money. Workers earn kudos by fulfilling requests, and those kudos grant priority for their own future requests. But kudos can never be bought or sold. They represent contributed effort, and nothing else. Those who leave their kudos unspent are effectively donating their compute to anonymous users and newcomers who have none, ensuring the system remains open even to people who have nothing to give back yet.

Why Free Access Matters

Commercial AI services impose subscriptions, usage caps, and terms that can change without notice. They decide what you can generate, what models you can use, and what happens to your data. When access depends on payment, entire populations are excluded: those in developing nations, students, hobbyists, independent researchers, and anyone living under economic hardship.

Free access is not just a convenience. It is a statement about who gets to participate in the future. Generative AI is a general-purpose tool with applications across art, education, accessibility, science, and personal expression. Allowing that access to be gated by ability to pay means accepting that these benefits are only for the privileged.

AI Horde ensures that a baseline of access always exists: one that no corporation can revoke, no terms change can eliminate, and no price increase can put out of reach. As long as volunteers are willing to share, the service endures.

What We Guard Against

The centralization of AI behind corporate paywalls poses a real threat to the open ecosystem that made these technologies possible in the first place. Large language models and image generators were built on openly published research, publicly available datasets, and community-driven development. When the resulting tools are locked behind subscription fees, the public effectively pays twice: once through the shared knowledge that trained the models, and again for the privilege of using them.

We also guard against the erosion of choice. When a handful of providers control access to generative AI, they also control what content can be created, which use cases are permitted, and whose values are encoded into the system. A decentralized, volunteer-driven alternative ensures that no single entity holds that power.

AI Horde is not opposed to commercial AI services existing. But we believe a non-commercial alternative must also exist: one that is accountable to its community rather than to shareholders, and one that prioritizes public benefit over revenue.

About Haidra

Haidra is the volunteer organization behind AI Horde. Registered as a non-profit association in Luxembourg, Haidra's objectives include increasing access to free and open-source machine learning technologies, supporting education, facilitating open development, and promoting the free flow of information. Our articles of association explicitly state that the Association's actions shall never unfairly benefit private interests over public ones.

The name reflects what we are: a collective of developers, operators, advocates, and users working together because we believe these tools should exist in the commons. We are not a company. We have no investors, no revenue targets, and no exit strategy. We are here because this work matters.