Darkbloom warns Mac rental earnings will fall as AI token prices drop
The network told members payouts will shrink as token prices slide, citing a 77% drop at Anthropic to $0.62 per million tokens in October 2026.
Darkbloom, a decentralized AI inference network, has warned its members that earnings from renting out spare Mac compute will fall as AI token prices decline, according to tomshardware.com.
The network pointed to Anthropic, whose price per million tokens fell 77% in under five months, reaching $0.62 in October 2026 from $2.65 in May.
Median earnings of the top 50 operators on Darkbloom's leaderboard are about $159.86 per month, or about $5.26 per day. Factoring in the 77% token price drop, those earnings would fall to about $36.77 per month, or roughly $1.23 per day.
OpenRouter, Darkbloom's primary client, now prioritizes decode speed, quantization and prefill speed. Darkbloom said it is analyzing model demand to tell members which models are in higher demand.
The network added that it is exploring workloads beyond inference, including distributed CI/CD jobs, and is seeking clients outside OpenRouter.
Earlier expectations
Before the price decline, someone running an M5 Pro Mac Mini with 64GB of unified memory was estimated to earn as much as $192 per month in the best case.
Quick answers
How much do Darkbloom's top operators earn per month?
The median earnings of the top 50 operators on Darkbloom's leaderboard are about $159.86 per month, or about $5.26 per day.
Why are Darkbloom earnings expected to fall?
Darkbloom warned members that payouts will drop as AI token prices fall; accounting for the 77% decline, median earnings would fall to about $36.77 per month.
What is Darkbloom exploring beyond AI inference?
The network said it is looking at distributed CI/CD jobs and clients outside OpenRouter.