Imagine a world where not only does AI control the apps you use every day, but also influences how you invest in crypto. This would create a whole realm of growth and innovation in the crypto space. Now that we are entering 2025, AI tokens are the hottest thing. They use a wide range of technologies, including blockchain, to disrupt new decentralized finance, among others. If you’re interested in how to invest in cryptocurrency or how to start investing in crypto, then knowing about AI tokens is perhaps the most powerful way you can potentially make big bucks in this rapidly expanding space. This ultimate guide includes everything from the history of AI tokens to future trends. It will give you insight into why they are revolutionizing the crypto space even in a volatile market.

Key Takeaways

  • AI tokens are the outcome of mixing blockchain with AI. They provide rare investment opportunities in sectors such as decentralized computing and machine learning. As of mid-2025, the entire market cap for AI crypto is approximately $25–30 billion.
  • By total market cap, AI-integrated layer-1 blockchains lead the roundup of top AI trends and stories, followed by decentralized machine learning. There are many growth stories here even though it’s a volatile crypto market.
  • But so much has changed so quickly since 2017. For instance, the union between Fetch.ai, SingularityNET, and Ocean Protocol into ASI in 2024 spurred 200% gains in some tokens as AI use proliferated.
  • The possibility of 40% to 50% losses in portfolios in the first three months of 2025 underscores the importance for new crypto investors to have a variety of strategies.
  • The future is looking promising for the AI industry, which is predicted to grow at a rate of 28% per year. This makes AI tokens a great option for those learning how to invest in cryptocurrency.

Historical Background

Ever wonder how the marriage of AI and crypto started out as a speck—an idea that could be passed by on a long walk through a desert of things that never worked—to a multibillion-dollar industry that is the talk of any conversation about how to invest in cryptocurrency? The story begins in 2017, when blockchain technology was becoming trendy in the wake of Bitcoin’s ascent. Earlier projects like SingularityNET were already exploring decentralized AI services to democratize machine learning tools. It was during this time that the first wave of AI tokens came, which were designed to solve the issues with centralized AI, such as data silos and high computational costs that big tech companies such as Google had monopolized.

 

By 2018–2019, projects like Fetch.ai announced autonomous AI agents that were capable of doing things on the blockchain. This cleared the way for applications within finance and the supply chain. What made this even bigger was the DeFi boom of 2020. AI tokens were also included in decentralized finance, which allowed traders to use predictive analytics to trade in a highly volatile crypto market. A decentralized machine learning network launched in 2023–2024 was developed by Bittensor. Contributors were given TAO tokens, and the network’s valuation rose by over 500% in a year, courtesy of the AI hype following ChatGPT’s meteoric rise.


In 2024, its evolution accelerated as Fetch.ai (FET), SingularityNET (AGIX), and Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) enacted the formation of the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI). This group, which had a market cap of $5 billion, focused on AI ecosystems that collaborate. According to CoinGecko reports, the AI crypto market had less than $1 billion in 2019, and by mid-2025, it had ballooned to $25–30 billion. This is a 2500% increase. This growth illustrates the need for AI tokens: the decentralized approach is helping to solve actual problems—problems that centralized systems cannot solve, as they cannot compute to the necessary scale required for AI training and are up to 80% more expensive in terms of energy.


History shows that early adopters in 2017 were rewarded with 1000%+ returns by 2021. More sophisticated users like these tokens because they disperse risks by decentralizing processes, making it less likely that AI will fail in one place. As we go into the top stories, remember: AI tokens aren't just a flash in the pan, they are the bridge to a brighter, more useful crypto future that combines power with utility.

Top 1 Unique AI Narrative: AI-Integrated Layer-1 Blockchains

What if your blockchain were able to think for itself... adapting in real time to accommodate user needs... and operating faster and more efficiently than any other network? That is what makes AI-layer-1 blockchains so promising. By 2025, they will be among the most valued AI stories by market cap, worth more than $30 billion combined, with top projects such as NEAR Protocol and Internet Computer (ICP). These platforms bake AI directly into their core architecture, abstracting away an array of complexities while enabling features such as automated sharding and predictive resource allocation. This is changing the way developers build dApps in a volatile crypto market.


Until now, layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum had major scalability issues and could only process 15 to 30 transactions per second in the early 2020s. VENA, which launched in 2020, was the first to leverage AI enhancements with its Nightshade sharding, and transactions were final after 1.2 seconds—considerably faster than Solana’s 12 seconds and Ethereum’s 12 minutes. Beginning in 2021, ICP employed AI to compute on-chain information processing at more than 100,000 queries per second, trimming costs for AI-driven dApps by 90%. NEAR partnered with Google in 2024, and adoption increased by 150%, while ICP hosted AI models for Web3 businesses and its market cap grew by 200% at the beginning of 2025.


CoinMarketCap’s numbers tell the same story: Over $15 billion for NEAR and $10 billion for ICP as of September 2025. That rate is triple what it was the year before. For newcomers to crypto investing, such tokens provide a way to get started by staking and earning 5–10% APY. Veteran investors have built AI tools to shield against price swings.


Kraken’s 2025 reports show AI integration reduces gas charges by 70%, which is better than plain DeFi chains.

Top 2 Unique AI Narrative: Decentralized Machine Learning Networks

Decentralized machine learning networks can be thought of as a worldwide network for AI models to compete and cooperate in without a central authority, gaining rewards as they improve. TAO is the biggest AI story with a market cap of $7 billion as of September 2025. This is the story of peer-to-peer avenues that incentivize model training and correct the issues with centralized AI—the AI that excluded 80% of developers from working on it until 2020.


One such project is Bittensor, which was launched in 2021. It leverages what’s called a proof-of-intelligence consensus to train models on tasks such as image recognition, and the most successful contributors receive TAO tokens. By 2023, it had over 30 subnets and 50 by 2025. These subnets enabled collective intelligence that resulted in models being 40% more accurate than when used individually, studies on arXiv reveal. Roadmap highlights include 2024 Polkadot integration, 200% adoption uplift, and real-world deployment in healthcare, with decentralized ML pinpointing disease outbreaks 25% faster than legacy systems.

Top 3 Unique AI Narrative: Decentralized GPU Rendering and Compute

Have you been frustrated by the cost and time of getting a cloud GPU for AI tasks? Decentralized GPU rendering and compute projects solve this issue by team-sharing idle hardware. Popular projects like Render (RNDR) have a market cap of $3.6 billion and Akash (AKT) has $8 billion across its projects. This approach democratizes access to computing for all, which is vital when training AI consumed 10% of the world’s electricity in 2024.


Founded in 2017, Render, based in San Francisco, matches artists and developers with free computing power that goes unused, such as GPUs for 3D rendering and machine learning, removing 90% of the cost compared to Amazon Web Services, according to a 2025 TokenMetrics report.

Top 4 Unique AI Narrative: AI Agents and Superintelligence Alliances

What if artificial intelligence could buy or sell things on the blockchain, such as data? AI agents and superintelligence alliances, whose total capitalization is estimated at $2–3 billion and rank fourth with ASI, amount to $6 billion and focus on autonomous actors that underlie decentralized economies.


FET, AGIX, and OCEAN merged into ASI in 2024. ASI builds agents for things like data monetization. Actions will be permitted on-chain after a 2025 update, which will expand the ecosystem 2.5x. History: Fetch.ai became the first to deploy the use of agents in 2018. In 2023, there were multi-agent systems for DeFi.

Top 5 Unique AI Narrative: Decentralized Data Indexing for AI

How are AI systems able to make sense of a lot of blockchain data without any centralized bottlenecks? The fifth-ranked decentralized data indexing platform has a market cap of $3 billion. It takes in $5 billion and hands AI apps tools to scour it.


The Graph thinks of itself as a Google for Web3. It began in 2018 and will be able to process 100,000 queries a second by 2025, a 400% increase over what it could handle in 2022. The AI subgraph will be introduced in 2024, a new way to access ML data.

Risks and Risk Management in AI Token Investments: Navigating the Volatile Landscape

No investment is without risk, especially in AI tokens where hype meets reality. How can you protect your portfolio? Some of the biggest risks are market volatility, with drawdowns of 49% in the first quarter of 2025, changes in regulations like the 2024 EU AI Acts, and scams, with 150,000 reports in the US.


The ICO busts of 2018 wiped out 90% of the value. The evolution to 2025 stresses the importance of doing your homework. Don't put more than 10% of your money into one thing; use stop-losses; and do your research on CoinGecko. For beginners, start small.

Bottom Line

In the end, AI tokens can be a game changer. To learn how to invest in crypto successfully, everything starts with reading the best narratives, distributing funds, and riding the trends. The secret to making money in the long term, whether you are a novice or an expert, is to make disciplined decisions even if things change.

 

This article is contributed by an external writer: Obed, Obed Ukeme.

 

Disclaimer: The content created by LBank Creators represents their personal perspectives. LBank does not endorse any content on this page. Readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor can this article be considered as investment advice.