Press Release

Henderson, Nevada — Monday, March 23rd, 2026 — EVIO, Inc. ("EVIO" or the "Company") today announces the commencement of a research initiative into the Bittensor network and its native TAO token, as part of the Company's ongoing effort to identify technology frameworks with the potential to intersect meaningfully with its digital asset strategy and market intelligence development.

Bittensor and the Decentralized AI Landscape

Bittensor is a decentralized, open-source protocol built on blockchain infrastructure that organizes machine learning development through a native incentive layer. Rather than concentrating AI model research within a single organization or infrastructure stack, Bittensor structures the process as a competitive marketplace: contributors submit machine learning models to purpose-built subnetworks, where outputs are evaluated and rewarded in TAO — the protocol's native digital asset — according to the informational value they generate. The result is a continuously evolving, community-driven research environment spanning more than 128 active subnets, each operating with a distinct objective, contributor base, and incentive structure.

Momentum within the Bittensor ecosystem has accelerated materially in recent weeks. On March 20, 2026, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang publicly acknowledged the strategic value of decentralized AI training frameworks, remarks that contributed to TAO trading above $300 — a level not reached since January — and drew sustained attention from both institutional and technology-oriented market participants. Around the same time, the successful pre-training of Covenant-72B, a 72-billion-parameter large language model, was documented in a March 2026 arXiv publication. The model was trained across Bittensor's Subnet 3 by more than 70 distributed contributors operating on standard commercial hardware, achieving a 67.1 score on the MMLU benchmark and representing the largest confirmed decentralized LLM pre-training run to date. That result functions as a meaningful proof of concept: that competitive, incentive-aligned networks can produce outputs at a scale and quality that invites serious institutional attention.

Institutional recognition of Bittensor is also progressing at the regulatory level. In December 2025, Grayscale filed a Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to convert the Grayscale Bittensor Trust into a spot exchange-traded product listed on NYSE Arca, with plans to stake the fund's TAO holdings. That filing remains subject to regulatory review, but its submission reflects a broader shift in how established financial intermediaries are beginning to approach decentralized AI infrastructure.

Relevance to EVIO's Strategic Direction

EVIO is actively evaluating a strategy to accumulate TAO as a core holding within a digital asset treasury framework. The Company believes that public issuers with disciplined capital allocation practices, clear disclosure standards, and access to the capital markets may be well positioned to serve as efficient vehicles through which investors can gain exposure to high-conviction digital assets — and that TAO, given the maturation of the Bittensor ecosystem and the growing institutional footprint around it, warrants serious consideration within that context.

The investment thesis management is evaluating centers on TAO's role as the native incentive layer of what is becoming one of the most substantiated decentralized AI networks in operation. Unlike digital assets whose value is primarily speculative or driven by network effects alone, TAO is designed to be earned and allocated based on the productive output of machine learning models. Management believes this structural grounding — combined with the Covenant-72B result, the NVIDIA endorsement, and the Grayscale filing — reflects a digital asset with strengthening fundamental underpinnings that align with EVIO's broader thesis around the convergence of AI and digital finance.

EVIO's evaluation of a TAO treasury position is part of the same framework the Company has applied to its broader digital asset strategy: identifying public-market opportunities at the intersection of capital formation, technology, and next-generation financial infrastructure. Management views TAO not as a speculative trade, but as a potential long-duration strategic holding consistent with the Company's intention to build a treasury that reflects where it believes durable value in the digital asset space is being created.

EVIO's treasury strategy is being developed with capital allocation discipline and appropriate risk management as its foundation. The Company is not approaching this as a near-term trading decision, but as a deliberate evaluation of whether TAO belongs in a portfolio of strategic digital asset positions aligned with the Company's long-term direction. Any treasury allocation will be structured with custody standards, governance protocols, and shareholder transparency consistent with EVIO's obligations as a public company.

The Company emphasizes that its evaluation of a TAO treasury position remains in progress. No acquisition, allocation, or commitment of capital has been made at this time. EVIO will provide updates to shareholders as its analysis advances and if material decisions regarding implementation are reached.