Welcome

What is QVAC?

QVAC is an open-source, cross-platform ecosystem for building local-first, peer-to-peer AI applications and systems. With QVAC, you can run AI tasks like LLMs, speech, RAG, and more locally across Linux, macOS, Windows, Android, and iOS — or delegate inference to peers using its built-in P2P capabilities.

Key features

• Local-first: load AI models and perform inference on your own machine. No third-party APIs, SaaS, or cloud involved.
• P2P: build unstoppable internet systems — like BitTorrent, IPFS, and blockchain networks, but for AI.
• Cross-platform: consistent developer experience across hardware, operating systems, and JS runtime environments — write code once, run it everywhere.
• Open source: 100% free to use and modify — build on top, contribute back, be part of our community.

Ecosystem

QVAC is composed of JavaScript libraries and tools that converge in the JS SDK. The SDK is the main entry point for using QVAC. It is type-safe and exposes all QVAC capabilities through a unified interface. It runs on Node.js, Bare runtime, and Expo.

QVAC also encompasses desktop and mobile flagship applications to empower users and showcase QVAC capabilities, as well as research initiatives to advance the state of the art in local AI.

Why QVAC?

QVAC is Tether's answer to the centralized AI by ensuring it's not tied to massive data centers in the hands of a few but is free to run on everyone's devices, without a central point of failure or without arbitrary censorship.

We do so by enabling devices to run local AI models and ensuring connectivity only happens peer-to-peer, through Holepunch technology. We do so by building an SDK for developers, and flagship end-user applications around it, to showcase the capabilities of our technology to a wider audience.

Key differentiators

• Unified approach: other local AI solutions like Llama.rn, Cactus, and react-native-executorch each solve parts of the puzzle, but none offer a unified approach like QVAC — one single API surface, feature-complete, and consistent behavior across runtime environments and platforms.
• Out-of-the-box P2P: share and run AI models with peers, with no extra setup or prior knowledge required.

How QVAC?

QVAC's key features are enabled by the following technologies and standards:

• Local AI: leverages state-of-the-art open-source edge AI engines and models (e.g., GGML and ONNX).
• P2P: built on Holepunch technology.
• Cross-platform: runs on Bare by Holepunch, a lightweight, cross-platform JavaScript runtime.
• OSS: released under Apache 2.0 license.

Our vision

Learn about Tether's long-term vision for QVAC.

Public launch

Tether publicly launched QVAC in October 2025 at the Plan B Forum in Lugano. During the forum, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino presented QVAC's future vision in his keynote, Fiat Lux:

Tether VP of Engineering Subash and QVAC Product & Engineering Manager Marco Chiappetta also presented the technology overview in their keynote, QVAC — Sovereign AI for the Universe:

In a nutshell

We envision a future where individuals and companies own their AI agents, built on top of QVAC. These agents will communicate directly with peers via Holepunch stack and transact using wallets built on top of WDK. Just as Bitcoin and blockchain networks will decentralize finance and transactions, QVAC will decentralize AI.

While new local AI solutions may emerge, QVAC remains unique due to its P2P connectivity through the Holepunch stack — making it unstoppable — and its synergy with WDK.