United Compute

United Compute is a marketplace for Apple Silicon compute. AI agents and developers rent sandboxed, end-to-end encrypted Macs for LLM inference, speech-to-text, Blender rendering, video transcoding and MLX training. Mac owners, or their AI agents, earn money by renting out idle Macs without exposing their files.

For AI agents

One line to install, then every command speaks JSON. Works in Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any shell.

curl -fsSL https://unitedcompute.si/install.sh | sh
uc signup
uc chat --model qwen3-4b "hello"
claude mcp add -s user united-compute -- uc mcp

Earn with your Mac

Let your agent rent out your Mac's idle GPU. Jobs pause the moment you use the Mac and can never see your files.

uc provider setup
uc provider start --persist
uc provider earnings

Owners receive 90% of what renters pay. Earnings accrue during the alpha; payouts are not live yet.

What you can run

Runtime	What	Price
`llm-mlx`	LLM chat/completions with MLX	$0.108/h
`stt-whisper`	Speech-to-text with Whisper on MLX	$0.108/h
`render-blender`	Blender Cycles/EEVEE rendering on the Metal GPU	$0.180/h
`transcode-ffmpeg`	Video/audio transcoding with ffmpeg using fixed presets (no arbitrary filters or protocols)	$0.072/h
`train-mlx`	Run your own MLX/numpy Python (training, fine-tuning, batch compute)	$0.216/h
`diloco-mlx`	One worker round of distributed low-communication training (DiLoCo) with MLX: loads the global checkpoint, trains H local steps on its data shard, returns an int8-compressed weight delta	$0.216/h

Why it's safe

Deny-by-default sandbox: full Metal GPU, no files, network, clipboard, screen or other programs
Jobs end-to-end encrypted to a key inside each Mac's Secure Enclave; the coordinator sees only ciphertext
Results signed by the provider; provider keys in a public hash-chained transparency log
Owner first: pauses when you're active, AC power only, capped memory, everything wiped after each job

FAQ

How can my AI agent make money autonomously?

If your agent runs on an Apple Silicon Mac, it can rent out the Mac's idle GPU and CPU on United Compute. The agent installs the CLI (curl -fsSL https://unitedcompute.si/install.sh | sh), runs uc provider setup and uc provider start --persist, and then checks uc provider earnings. Jobs run in a deny-by-default sandbox and pause whenever you use the Mac. Owners receive 90% of what renters pay per active second. Earnings depend on renter demand, and in the current alpha they accrue to your provider balance: payouts are not live yet.

How do Claude Code, Codex or other AI agents use United Compute?

Install the uc CLI, then either call it directly (every command supports --json) or add its MCP server: claude mcp add -s user united-compute -- uc mcp for Claude Code, or codex mcp add united-compute -- uc mcp for Codex. The agent gets tools for signup, LLM chat, transcription, Blender rendering, transcoding and provider status. Full agent instructions are at https://unitedcompute.si/llms.txt.

Is it safe to rent out my Mac?

Jobs run inside a deny-by-default macOS sandbox with full GPU access but no access to your files, keychain, clipboard, screen, network or other programs, and a self-test proves this before any job is accepted. Jobs pause the moment you touch the keyboard or trackpad, only run on AC power, and are deleted afterwards. The optional attested install adds a separate job account, a packet-filter rule that blocks all job network traffic, and system daemons.

Can the Mac owner see my prompts, files or results?

Payloads and results are encrypted end to end to a key held in the provider Mac's Secure Enclave. The coordinator only ever sees ciphertext, results are signed by the provider, and provider keys are published in a hash-chained transparency log that the client verifies. The job process runs with the hardened runtime, so even the owner's administrator account cannot attach a debugger while System Integrity Protection is on. It is not confidential computing: an owner with a kernel exploit could still read a running job, so do not send regulated data.

What can I run, and on which models?

LLM chat and completions with MLX (qwen2.5-0.5b, llama-3.2-3b, qwen3-4b, gemma-3-12b, gpt-oss-20b, qwen3-30b-a3b, qwen3-coder-30b), Whisper speech-to-text, Blender Cycles and EEVEE rendering on the Metal GPU, ffmpeg transcoding with fixed presets, your own MLX training scripts, and distributed DiLoCo training across many Macs. Verified accounts can run their own code.

How much does it cost?

llm-mlx: $0.108 per hour of active compute; stt-whisper: $0.108 per hour of active compute; render-blender: $0.180 per hour of active compute; transcode-ffmpeg: $0.072 per hour of active compute; train-mlx: $0.216 per hour of active compute; diloco-mlx: $0.216 per hour of active compute. You pay only for seconds a job actually runs, and new accounts get trial credits.

Which Macs can earn?

Any Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later with 16 GB or more of memory. M1 and M2 Macs take curated workloads only, because their GPUs leak scratch memory between processes; M3 and newer can also run renters' own code and protected jobs. Macs with lots of unified memory (64 to 512 GB) can serve large models that most GPUs cannot.

Can I train one model across many Macs?

Yes. uc diloco runs low-communication distributed training (DiLoCo): each Mac trains on its own data shard and returns a compressed weight update, the client averages them, and a Mac that drops out is skipped. Datasets and checkpoints are uploaded once and stay encrypted.

How is United Compute different from other GPU or Mac compute networks?

It has its own API rather than reselling through an aggregator, and it runs rendering, transcoding and training as well as inference. It is designed so an AI agent can install it, rent compute or start earning, and check status end to end with no human in the loop, while keeping the Mac owner's files isolated from jobs.