Crowdfunding gathers money. Crowdcomputing gathers compute.
Every day, millions of computers sit idle — desktops after work, gaming PCs between sessions, laptops at night, workstations waiting for the next task. Powerful machines, already built and already connected, doing nothing useful most of the time.
At the same time, artists, researchers, engineers and small teams need more computation than they can afford. Frames to render. Simulations to run. Data to process. Ideas to bring to life.
Crowdcomputing connects these two realities. It's a new way to support computational projects — not by giving money, but by letting your machine help while you're not using it.
Like crowdfunding, but with machine power
Crowdfunding let people back creative and technical projects with small contributions of money. Crowdcomputing applies the same idea to computation: contributing idle machine power to projects you care about — like crowdfunding, but with compute instead of money.
A creator publishes a project. People who care about it join with their machines. OmnibusCloud distributes the work. The community completes the result.
Instead of "I'll donate $10," a contributor says:
"My computer can help while I sleep."
That's the heart of crowdcomputing.
How it works
A creator publishes a project on the OmnibusCloud Portal — what needs computing, why it matters, and what kind of work is involved. Supporters choose the projects they want to help and connect their machines. OmnibusCloud breaks the work into tasks and spreads it across everyone taking part, adapting to whatever hardware each machine brings. When enough contributors join, a project gains compute capacity its creator could never afford alone.
You stay in control throughout — your machine helps only when you allow it, on your terms. How to take part → and Schedules & control → cover the details.
How it's different from cloud computing
Traditional cloud computing starts with datacenters: a company builds or rents centralized infrastructure, and you pay for capacity hosted inside it.
Crowdcomputing starts somewhere else — with the machines already around us. It doesn't replace the cloud; some workloads will always belong in datacenters. But many useful tasks can be split, distributed and completed across many independent devices.
The difference isn't only technical. It's social:
Cloud computing is purchased. Crowdcomputing is gathered. Cloud computing is centralized. Crowdcomputing is community-powered. Cloud computing begins with infrastructure. Crowdcomputing begins with participation.
What it's for
The public beta starts with rendering and creative work — independent animation, short films, motion design, architectural visualization, 3D art, small studio render jobs. Rendering is a natural first step: many frames and tiles can be processed independently, and the result is visual, understandable and useful from day one.
But crowdcomputing isn't limited to rendering. OmnibusCloud supports new kinds of work through controllers — small plugins that teach the platform a new type of computation. Over time it can extend to simulation, data processing, scientific workloads, asset generation and more. The rule is simple: if a workload can be split, distributed and validated, it can become crowdcomputing.
Who it's for
For contributors, it's a way to help projects you care about without spending money — using machine power that would otherwise sit idle. Your contribution isn't abstract: you see the project, follow its progress, and choose where your machine helps.
For creators, it's a way to reach computation through community instead of a budget. Tell the story behind your project, publish it, and invite others to help complete it. It changes what a small team can attempt.
Is this volunteer computing?
It shares the spirit — people contribute resources to help work get done. But crowdcomputing starts with visible projects you choose, each with a story and a community, rather than an anonymous background task. And it's built to grow into something larger.
Is this "crowd computing"?
Not quite — and the one-word spelling is deliberate. "Crowd computing," two words, is an academic term for human computation: people performing small tasks, Mechanical Turk-style. Crowdcomputing is the inverse — the machines do the computing, and the people choose which projects to support.
Is it safe?
Yes — by design. Your machine works only when you allow it, runs only reviewed workloads — self-contained, with no access to your files — and the first controllers are open source, so anyone can inspect what they do.
Your machine. Your rules. Your choice to participate. More on trust & safety →
Why now?
The world is compute-hungry. Rendering, simulation, AI and digital creation demand more every year — while billions of devices already exist and sit underused for most of their lives.
Crowdcomputing begins with a practical question: what if even a small fraction of that idle power could be coordinated safely and usefully? It starts with people choosing projects they care about, and grows as more machines join — pointing toward something larger: the ultracomputer, a global compute fabric built from many devices and many participants.
Start crowdcomputing
Join the public beta today. Explore projects, connect a machine, or create your own on the OmnibusCloud Portal.
Let's build the ultracomputer together!