Checked September 30, 2026.
Who are the “founders of Gonka”?
Gonka is a decentralized network with no owners. The term “Gonka founders” refers to the people and teams who helped create the protocol and launch the network: its co-creators and early contributors.
Gonka grew out of work by brothers Daniil and David Liberman and the engineering team at Product Science. Gleb Morgachev is one of the protocol's co-creators. Independent GPU operators helped launch the mainnet by providing the hardware on which it began running.
The Libermans: before Gonka and at its beginning
Daniil and David Liberman worked on games, computer graphics and augmented reality before Gonka. In 2016, they founded Kernel AR with their sisters Anna and Maria. Snap acquired the company, and the brothers subsequently worked at Snapchat. Their biography covers these earlier projects.
Product Science became the starting point for Gonka. The company states on its website that it incubated the project. The official Gonka website identifies Product Science as the Protocol Creator.
Daniil discusses the original idea in an interview with House of ZK. In a joint U.Today interview, the brothers discuss Gonka's development and its early hosts.
Gleb Morgachev and the developers
Gleb Morgachev is a Gonka co-creator and Core Dev Team Lead at Product Science. He previously worked at JetBrains, as listed in his public profile.
In a GitHub discussion about protocol development, Gleb introduces himself as one of Gonka's co-creators and proposes funding an independent engineering team from the community pool. The discussion shows how plans for further development are brought to network participants.
The code is available in gonka-ai/gonka. Contributors include DimaOrekhovPS, GLiberman, mtvnastya, a-kuprin and tamazgadaev. This is a selection of contributors; the repository history records individual changes, discussions and reviews.
Other developers can contribute through Gonka's bounty program. Payments for accepted contributions require network approval.
Early hosts: who supplied the hardware?
Hosts supply compute, run nodes and serve requests to AI models. Gonka's website lists Gcore, Hyperfusion and 6block among its operators. 6block also describes its compute and infrastructure contributions to Gonka on its own website.
According to information provided to Gonka Space by its community maintainer, Gcore, Hyperfusion, 6block and GrandCroix were among the first miners involved in the mainnet launch.
For today's hosts and their activity, see the Gonka explorers and dashboards.
Investors and early support
Product Science received backing from Coatue Management, Slow Ventures and K5. They are named as its investors in Bitfury's announcement about Gonka.
According to Gonka Space's community maintainer, Hard Yaka and Web3.com Ventures participated in early project financing. Publicly, Hard Yaka and Web3.com Ventures are listed on gonka.ai as Community Partners.
On December 2, 2025, Bitfury announced a commitment to invest $50 million in Gonka. Its release separately mentions an approved $12 million purchase of GNK from the community pool. The announcement does not disclose a funding schedule for the full $50 million or describe the entire amount as a token purchase.
Who makes decisions in Gonka?
Protocol co-creators, developers and other community members propose changes, which are considered through network governance. In a BeInCrypto interview, David Liberman describes on-chain voting for upgrades and proposals.
You can follow that process through proposals and voting results, and follow development through GitHub pull requests and releases.