Catenaa, Saturday, January 31, 2026-Onchain lending protocol USD.AI has approved a $500 million loan facility for Sharon AI, an Australian artificial intelligence infrastructure company.
This marks one of the largest crypto-native financings tied to physical AI assets.
USD.AI said the facility will support Sharon AI’s expansion of large-scale graphics processing unit deployments, as demand for computing capacity rises across enterprise, research and government customers in Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.
Sharon AI plans to begin drawing on the facility this quarter, with about $65 million earmarked for initial GPU installations.
The transaction highlights the growing role of blockchain-based lenders in financing capital-intensive AI projects that often struggle to access traditional bank credit.
USD.AI operates as an onchain lending platform that extends credit backed by verified physical infrastructure rather than corporate balance sheets.
Under the structure, borrowers pledge GPU hardware as collateral. Those assets are tokenized onchain, creating a direct link between deployed computing equipment and liquidity provided through the protocol.
USD.AI said this approach limits exposure by confining risk to specific infrastructure rather than broader business operations.
The protocol relies on a dual-token model built around a dollar-pegged stablecoin and a yield-bearing counterpart used by liquidity providers.
USD.AI said it has already approved more than $1.2 billion in guidance and non-recourse facilities for AI infrastructure operators, including other data center and compute-focused firms.
The deal reflects a broader convergence between crypto finance and the AI sector, as demand for GPUs accelerates and alternative funding channels gain traction.
Market participants say onchain lending models could play a larger role in funding physical technology assets as tokenization of real-world infrastructure expands.
