48 hours before the commencement of the project’s token launch on the Solana network, io.net, a peer-to-peer platform that provides an infrastructure for selling computational power, specifically GPU, in exchange for money, has terminated the CEO.

Leadership Change and Allegations

One of the io.net founders, Ahmad Shadid, stepped down “effective immediately,” and Tory Green, another founder and former COO, stepped in. To enable the founders of machine learning startups to receive access to computing power at a lower cost than a regular cloud computing service, the Solana-based AI project creates a network of GPU supplies.

In his post on X on June 9, Shadid stated that while there have been accusations about his past, he is voluntarily resigning from the position of CEO in order to spare io.net from being preoccupied by such matters and to concentrate on its development. Shadid didn’t address those “allegations” directly, but critics claimed that he deceived investors about the quantity of GPU chips that io.net genuinely provides. There was also a GPU metadata attack on the network on April 28 which saw the active GPU connections reduce from 600,000 to 10,000.

Upcoming Token Launch and Market Reactions

The io.net token, IO, will launch on Binance’s Launchpool on June 11 at 12:00 (UTC). In the initial phase, 95,000,000 IO tokens will be released which will make the total maximum limit of IO tokens that can be issued to 800,000,000.

The moment Shadid stepped down, many people thought he was going to “dump IO coins and exit” at the launch of the product. Industry commentator Badenglishtea informed 15,300 followers of the X account, “It is as shady as depin gets.”

Shadid replied that none of the team members, investors, or advisors will be able to liquidate their monthly vesting tokens until June 2025 because the lock-in period of IO tokens is four years. To “help grow the ecosystem” Shadid stated that he will personally send one million IO tokens to the company’s Internet of GPUs Foundation.

Future Prospects and New Leadership

As for further participation in the io.net ecosystem, the outgoing CEO failed to explain the reason. According to Green, with the company’s new CEO having been appointed, more changes in leadership structure will be made known in the coming days.

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Green has stated that the launch of the coin brings ‘‘a new phase of growth for the network.” He emphasized, “We are still very much focused on building the most prominent decentralized AI compute network and a lot of work will be done to retain existing suppliers and acquire new ones as well as new clients.”

According to Green, io.net has added approximately 20,000 GPUs that are available for clusters and has support for end-to-end workloads with model training and AI/ML inference for numerous businesses that focus on AI.