Decentralized Compute + Swarm Inference: The Future of AI Models | Ivan Nikitin, Fortytwo (#71)

Small, specialized AI models are catching up to and in many cases outperforming — frontier LLMs. Fortytwo is building a decentralized compute network where thousands of lightweight models collaborate, rank each other’s outputs, and produce reasoning-quality results that rival the biggest models in the world. This is swarm Inference powered by DePIN.In this episode, Tom Trowbridge (Co-Founder of Fluence) talks with Ivan Nikitin, Co-Founder of Fortytwo — a decentralized AI network that recently surpassed GPT-5–class models on coding, math and hard-science benchmarks.🚀 This episode breaks down why the era of mega-models is slowing, how swarm architectures overcome hallucinations, and why decentralized compute may be the future of AI infrastructure:

- Why small specialized models now outperform frontier LLMs on domain tasks

- How Fortytwo’s “swarm ranking” filters out hallucinations and boosts accuracy

- The limitations of giant models: diminishing returns & rising compute costs

- Decentralized compute: consumer hardware as a global AI network

- The Fortytwo reward system: reputation, incentives & proof-of-InferenceIf you want to understand why decentralized compute is challenging the frontier-model paradigm — and how swarm Inference could redefine the future of AI — listen now! 🎧