“The Silicon Valley idea innovators,” Daniil and David Liberman, have criticized Telegram’s moves in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). They believe that two years ago Pavel Durov missed the opportunity for decentralized AI and is now merely “doing something” to catch up with competitors.
The Libermans stated in a podcast that two years ago they discussed implementing a decentralized AI model with the Durov brothers. However, at the time, Pavel’s brother Nikolai Durov expressed doubts about the model’s viability and insisted on his own approach. According to Daniil Liberman, “Two years passed, and we saw that [Nikolai’s ideas] didn’t work. Now they are just trying to do something.”
Their main argument is that major U.S. tech corporations (the Big Five) dominate the market with millions of GPUs. David Liberman believes that competing with them is only possible through decentralized AI models.
Daniil Liberman added that companies like Telegram, Canva, and Picsart all require significant computing power for AI models (LLMs, graphic models). If everyone fights for “their small share of GPUs,” they will never catch up with giants. Even features like Sorare’s “one-click video creation” demand massive resources.
The brothers also expressed skepticism about Telegram’s recent plans to open an AI lab in Kazakhstan and collaborate with a local supercomputer cluster. David Liberman commented, “Kazakhstan does not have millions of GPUs, and it won’t.”
They argue that Kazakhstan (like the UAE or Vietnam) has only a limited number of GPUs and is now trying to maintain its AI “sovereignty.” This is insufficient for global competition, and Durov is merely acting to keep pace, as progress without AI is impossible.
What’s the solution? David Liberman believes that such initiatives will succeed only if they are open-source and allow participation from multiple players. The goal is to create an ecosystem comparable to China’s “DeepSeek” model.
However, Daniil Liberman adds that open-source alone is not enough. A Bitcoin-like financial framework is needed to provide incentives for people to contribute their computing power, with value determined by the market and speculation.
