Weekly upload
- AI-related cryptocurrency companies have raised nearly $1.9 billion in 2025.
- The market is expected to swell to $1 trillion.
- However, others question the results of the projects so far.
The AI-driven cryptocurrency sector will rise five-fold to reach $1 trillion over the next decade.
This is according to Maxime Legge, CEO of blockchain infrastructure company Pangea. He said DL News The sector will gain momentum as legitimate projects enter the mix.
“AI will become the new interface for blockchains, which will open up blockchain infrastructure to non-technical users — rather than just atomists and developers,” Legg said. “Once the technical barriers are removed through AI, anyone can truly make transactions on-chain.”
Legg’s forecast underscores the stubborn optimism of those betting that the sector, which venture capital firm Architype estimates is worth $20 billion, will revolutionize cryptocurrency trading.
And investors are putting their money where their mouth is. AI-related cryptocurrency startups raised nearly $2 billion across 261 deals in 2025 alone, according to PitchBook figures. displaysafter just over $2.5 billion in 2024. Since 2020, the sector has attracted nearly $13 billion in total funding, according to PitchBook data.
Devillama Data It paints a similar picture. Startups innovating in cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence raised more than $550 million in the first nine months of the year, a 7% increase over the total amount raised in 2024, according to the data.
However, even as investors pour capital into projects promising to deliver cutting-edge technology, others warn that these start-ups have achieved little so far.
It rises to $35 billion
On paper, AI has a lot to do.
Companies in the sector, such as chip maker Nvidia and software giant Microsoft, have led stock market growth over the past two years as hype around artificial intelligence reaches its peak.
Adding to the hype, OpenAI, the world’s leading generative AI company, Announce multi-billion dollar deal with Advanced Micro Devices earlier in October. The deal will see OpenAI buy six gigawatts worth of AMD chips.
In the cryptocurrency space, news like this has seen the total value of the AI-related cryptocurrency market rise by 14% over the past 30 days to $35.5 billion. According to To Coin Market Cap. That’s just about half of the record $70 billion reached in December.
Danny Sursok, partner at Archetype, is among those optimistic about the potential of artificial intelligence to revolutionize the cryptocurrency space. His company has backed startups such as Exo and Ritual, which blend the worlds of cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence.
He says DL News He is betting that the market will double in size and reach $40 billion in 2026.
“We will see a few killer AI applications emerge on-chain,” Sursok said. DL News. “Use cases will range from greatly improved front-ends built on intuitive natural language interfaces, to protocols with agents acting semi-autonomously on behalf of humans to perform a wide range of tasks.”
Many share this upward trend. For example, researchers at asset management company Bitwise suggests The combination of cryptocurrencies and artificial intelligence will add $20 trillion to the global economy by 2030.
“The floodgates are about to open,” said Ron Tarter, CEO of stablecoin firm MNEE. DL News.
“Lose it completely”
However, the amount raised through cryptocurrency-based AI projects this year still represents only about 1% of total funding. Flowing In the AI sector overall, with the majority of money going to major players like OpenAI and Anthropic, according to PitchBook data.
Despite the upside, even people like Sam AltmanCEO of OpenAI, and Chairman of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg to caution An AI bubble may form, which could cost investors a lot of money.
In the cryptocurrency space, skeptics are also throwing cold water on the upside.
Nick Imus, co-founder and CEO of Allora Labs, a company working to build a decentralized AI network, He said DL News Earlier in October, despite optimism about AI agents, so far these autonomous solutions have tended to get things wrong.
“There is an endless array of possibilities that could lead to a capital management error,” Emmons said. “They could lose it completely. They could put it in the wrong assets. They could misinterpret digital inputs to make incorrect financial decisions, or all sorts of things.”
Others, like Sean Ren, a professor at the University of Southern California and CEO of Sahara Labs, said DL News Crypto-AI projects are still “theoretical, lacking real-world applications or coherent infrastructure.”
Brian Huang, co-founder of portfolio automation software Glider, points out a fundamental flaw in the merger between AI and blockchain technology.
“The biggest problem with crypto AI is ‘finality.’ If your Ethereum is sent to the wrong place, there is no way to get it back,” Huang said. DL News. “This ‘ultimate’ problem is true even outside of cryptocurrency: you don’t ask Siri or ChatGPT to Venmo your friends.”
Another “obvious drawback” of crypto AI is that centralized AI products, such as ChatGPT, have a better user experience than decentralized versions, Huang said.
“It asks a more detailed question: Do users really care about decentralization?” He added.
You’re reading the latest edition of The Weekly Raise, our column covering fundraising deals across the cryptocurrency and DeFi spaces, powered by Devillama.
Lance Datscolo is Europe markets correspondent for DL News. Got a tip? Email at [email protected].
