The Next Destination of Crypto and AI Fusion in Top Venture Capitalists' Eyes
According to Tracxn data, the decentralized AI field has attracted $917 million in venture capital and private equity funding to date.
Key Points:
- The combination of AI and blockchain aims to decentralize data ownership, challenging tech giants like Alphabet and Amazon
- Venture capital has invested $917 million in the decentralized AI field, highlighting its potential as a significant investment opportunity
- A THETA Capital report suggests that decentralized AI can mitigate issues like spam and data scraping while creating new financial market opportunities
The explosive growth of mainstream AI tools over the past two years is driving the crypto and blockchain industry to explore decentralized alternatives to tech giants.
The synergy between AI and blockchain is based on mitigating the centralization risks of data ownership and access - theoretically, decentralization can prevent the entire AI economy from being monopolized by a few tech giants like Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), Alibaba (9988), and Tencent (0700).
It is currently impossible to assert whether this will constitute a serious problem, and even more difficult to predict if the blockchain industry can solve it. However, it is clear that crypto venture capital firms are investing millions of dollars to explore this. Data from the startup trading platform Tracxn shows that the decentralized AI field has attracted $917 million in venture capital and private equity funding.
The key question is: Are blockchain-based AI investments merely a hype bubble, or have they developed into a real opportunity?
Blockchain investment company THETA Capital, in its latest "Satellite Perspective" report, refers to "AI × Crypto" as an "inevitable pillar of AI" and compiles insights and prospects from notable investors in the field.
AI Agents
The report emphasizes: "There is no more prominent trend than the intersection of AI and crypto," and provides examples of AI agent trading and token issuance on the blockchain.
This may seem like an advanced play for speculators, but THETA believes this is a crypto-specific path to solving specific AI problems. The report notes: "Crypto wallets enable autonomous agents to participate in financial markets" and "Decentralized token networks are building the supply side of critical AI infrastructure such as computing power, data, and energy".
The report's conclusion is decisive: AI × Crypto is a "metagame".
Decentralized AI
Alex Pack, managing partner of blockchain venture capital firm Hack VC, calls Web3 AI the "largest alpha source in today's investment landscape". The firm's latest fund allocates 41% to the Web3 AI field, with its core challenge being to build a decentralized alternative to the centralized AI economy.
Pack states: "AI's rapid evolution increases centralization while improving efficiency" and "The convergence of crypto and AI is currently the biggest investment opportunity in the field, offering an open, decentralized alternative".
Hack VC's star investment project Grass encourages users to contribute idle bandwidth in exchange for tokens to participate in the AI network. This replaces the model of large companies scraping user data by embedding code. Founder Andrej Radonjic notes in the report: "Users often donate bandwidth unintentionally without compensation" and "Grass can produce high-quality data comparable to Google and Microsoft by building a large-scale peer-to-peer voluntary network".
Beware of AI "Takeover"
THETA acknowledges the investment risks of decentralized AI, which could lead to network proliferation: offensive speech, spam, hollow blog/video/meme content. Meme coins in the crypto space are a prime example - suspicious endorsements, wash trading, and pump-and-dump schemes are more efficiently operated by AI engines than humans.
Some venture capitalists view blockchain as a mitigation foundation. Polychain founder Olaf Carlson-Wee proposes a "human proof" mechanism: suppressing non-human behavior through micropayments or spam costs. "If sending an email costs $0.01, it maintains affordability for ordinary users while destroying the spam email economic model".
Carlson-Wee believes that under blockchain protection, AI will become the cornerstone of digital and financial systems, as its market performance may surpass humans. This reality should be embraced, not viewed as a dystopian threat.
He predicts: "AI systems will evolve into long-term capital allocators, predicting trend opportunities years in advance. Humans will entrust funds due to AI's superior data-driven decision-making capabilities" and "AI takeover will not be a war we lose - but a suggestion we voluntarily accept".
