NEAR Foundation Launches AI Cloud and Private Chat, Reaching Over 100 Million Users

The NEAR Foundation has officially launched two major, interconnected products: NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat. Announced via an X thread on December 3, 2025, these solutions are built on the principle that "users should own their AI" by offering "hardware-backed, verifiable privacy." The products are already integrated with Brave Nightly, OpenMind AGI, and Phala Network, collectively reaching an initial user base of over 100 million.

NEAR AI Cloud leverages industry-respected trusted execution environment (TEE) hardware from Intel TDX and NVIDIA Confidential Computing. This architecture ensures every data request is processed in a sealed and isolated environment, preventing external access. A key feature is the ability for users to verify their data's protection through a cryptographic attestation proving the model ran the expected code in the correct privacy environment.

Private Chat is an application built on top of NEAR AI Cloud, designed to bring verifiable privacy to everyday questions and research. Functionally similar to mainstream AI chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT or Google's Gemini, it distinguishes itself by eliminating data harvesting by the controlling company. Brave integrated NEAR AI Cloud into its test browser, Brave Nightly, on November 20.

The NEAR Foundation stated that its confidential computing solution has been "validated under real operational conditions: high-volume traffic, deterministic latency, strict compliance requirements" and is "proven at launch, stress-tested with partners handling sensitive workloads at scale."

This product launch coincides with significant fundamental momentum for the NEAR ecosystem. Data from Dune Analytics shows NEAR Intents metrics are ramping up exponentially, with over $7 billion in all-time volume and $11.68 million in total generated fees from 12 million cross-chain swaps. The platform has seen over 800,000 unique addresses in the last 30 days. For context, the all-time volume was $3 billion as recently as October 30, 2025.

Other recent developments include the U.S.-based prediction market Kalshi adding support for the NEAR token on November 25, and the NEAR validator community approving an inflation halving on October 28. This change reduced the NEAR token's annual tail emission from 5% to 2.5%, which could diminish future sell pressure by reducing new token supply.