What's in That Baloney, Alpha Compute?

What's in That Baloney, Alpha Compute?

I was eating a fried baloney sandwich for lunch. I almost choked when I read the September 9, 2026, news release issued by Alpha Compute (formerly AlphaTON Capital). The reverse merger with Portage has had its ups and downs. In my opinion, the publicly traded Nasdaq company has had more downs than ups. I recall the steady decline in the value of TONcoin. Then there was the departure of Andrei Grachev, the crypto market maker who had served on the board of directors of the Russian trade association RACIB, an outfit linked to the Kremlin and involved in policy for artificial intelligence and crypto. Enzo Villani was given the job of managing the company as it changed its name to Alpha Compute and acquired GAMEE, an online e-game company from Animoca Brands. Alpha Compute was supposed to be a reseller of excess compute in data centers with the expensive hardware required to run AI jobs. But e-games seemed to make sense to the leadership of Alpha Compute. And, in the midst of these sudden twists and turns, Yuri Mitin, once associated with the Moscow-based Red Shark Ventures, reduced his profile at the company. The Alpha Compute team then navigated a possible delisting due to the company's share price falling to around $0.15. Death by baloney? Nope, I recovered.

Let's take a look at the full text of the Alpha Compute news release below or click here for the source document.

Quick Take: What's in the Alpha Compute Bologna?

I want to highlight a few of the thoughts I had as I worked through this surprising publicity / marketing collateral.

Alpha Compute appears to have fired up an entity named Alpha AI Corporation. The outfit has created what seems to be a terminal that displays information about leasing AI compute. The idea is that a data center has AI-centric hardware. When it is idle, the data center can rent out the compute capability. Will this work like a Bloomberg terminal? Who knows.

The terminal and service can be viewed at https://altx.finance. The service offers a live market for GPU compute. When I examined the website, there were seven different screens available. Each screen or view corresponds to the "desks" — probably trading desks at some point. The desks are analysis, indexes and derivatives, markets, order book, risk and capital, sites and power, and token output.

Where does this Alpha AI Corporation fit into the Alpha Compute business? At this time, it appears to be a startup. The "terminal" seems to prepare Alpha Compute to become a broker of AI compute services. But this is likely to evolve. The terminal allegedly includes an AI component called "ChatAnalyst." Will this AI system advise on what service to choose? Will it morph into an investment advisor with trades taking place on Alpha AI Corporation's system? I can only speculate because the news release does not provide substantive information.

The new outfit is rolling out its own crypto token. The ALTX token will be used for buying GPU compute. What is confusing to me is that Alpha Compute was anchored to the TON coin, now rebranded as the GRAM coin. This crypto is the Telegram coin. Presumably some or all of the available compute will be offered to Telegram for its Cocoon AI confidential compute service. The contracts for GRAM and Cocoon appear to be anchored to the Telegram Level-1 blockchain and the distributed applications, or dApps, that allow complex transactions in the Telegram system. I am not sure how GRAM, ALTX, and the other Telegram capabilities interact. If these are part of the Cocoon playbook, cyber fraud investigators will have to work their way through what seems a very dense thicket, a thicket designed by a gardener who wants to make it difficult for Telegram to reveal the details of transactions within its system. Will Alpha Compute opt for transparency? As a publicly traded company, Alpha Compute has to follow the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. One caveat is that Alpha Compute has been interacting with the SEC about certain reporting, procedural, and share-price matters. I will be interested to see how this "trading" terminal evolves.

The news release mentions the "Right2Compute Coalition." Alpha Compute calls itself "a founding partner," which implies other partners exist. It is not clear who else is involved in this new initiative. The absence of specifics is notable. Perhaps Animoca Brands is. Earlier this year, Animoca Brands "sold" 60 percent of its online game company GAMEE to Alpha Compute, and Animoca obtained a seat on the board of directors of Alpha Compute. Animoca Brands is a key player in the Telegram and TON Foundation organizations."

Three Questions

I want to run down the questions this Alpha Compute news release triggered.

First, I do not know who organized and registered the entity "Alpha AI Corporation." I poked around and drew a blank today (September 9, 2026). I am a suspicious type. When information about the place of incorporation (if it is indeed a corporation), the parties involved in the new entity, and the capital available to the organization is not presented, I think to myself, "What's up?"

Second, who are the people running this entity? No names are provided. The website states, "Make the compute market legible." Why not present information about the people managing the operation? I am also curious about what LLM is powering the chat function.

Third, have my scrapers missed a previous post on X.com, a news release, or a mention in a public document about this ALTx innovation? Apparently there was information in an announcement on December 16, 2025. But December 2025 was a month chock-full of Andrei Grachev news and his departure for Falcon Finance. I will have to take a look at my files to see if this ALTx and this new entity are described in detail. Right now, I know only what is in the news release.

Finally, what are the price list and costs for the service? Token-gated pricing is fuzzy for a new token and for the buffeted GRAM coin. Pricing in a new token seems peculiar to me.

Web3, Transaction Machine, and No Regulator's Label

I cannot identify the people running the new entity. I don't know what the sources of the data in the terminal are. I don't know whether there are any customers. My personal thought is that this is an effort to rotate Alpha Compute away from its dependence on the Telegram organization. Since Pavel Durov's arrest in France in August 2024, some of the chrome trim on Telegram's retro rod has fallen off. Downtime, warrants in Australia and Russia, the loss of some of the "core team," and the pressure on Durov to provide information to the authorities suggest that the original AlphaTON Capital operation faces headwinds just like Telegram. One thing is certain: Alpha Compute has to pull some fat rabbits from its Goodwill hat. Like a street vendor selling baloney, Alpha Compute needs great marketing, but will those buying the product be happy?

P.S. There is a podcast for ALTX too. But it is not available. Here's the dead link: https://www.youtube.com/@AlphaLiquidPodcast. (Is that baloney fully cooked?) As of September 9, 2026, the ersatz meat roll is largely uncooked.

Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2026