AI-linked crypto tokens rallied Monday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang outlined the company’s next-phase AI infrastructure plan at the GTC developer conference — a speech that reignited enthusiasm for projects betting on agentic AI and decentralized compute.
Market movers
- NEAR jumped more than 10% over 24 hours to $1.4591, its strongest level since late January.
- FET, the token tied to the decentralized AI project Artificial Superintelligence Alliance, spiked as much as 20% intraday before trimming gains.
- WLD — the identity-focused crypto co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — climbed roughly 10% to about $0.3958, its highest since early March.
- Grass (GRASS), a network that lets users monetize unused bandwidth for AI model training, surged about 13% to fresh 2026 highs.
Why the move matters
Huang used the keynote to underscore Nvidia’s central role in the AI boom, forecasting roughly $1 trillion of chip-demand backlog through 2027 and saying hyperscale cloud providers will account for roughly 60% of its business. He also spotlighted the rise of “agentic” AI systems — autonomous, multi-step AI agents — praising the viral OpenClaw project and announcing an enterprise-hardened variant called NemoClaw aimed at making such agents safer for corporate use without exposing sensitive data.
Although Huang didn’t mention crypto, many blockchain teams are positioning themselves as the transactional and coordination layer for the next wave of AI agents. Startups and token projects are racing to build decentralized compute, training infrastructure and agent frameworks they say could be an alternative to centralized AI platforms.
Big-picture market reaction
Nvidia shares initially jumped about 2% during the keynote before settling to close roughly 1.5% higher, while a broader swath of AI-linked tokens re-rated on the prospect of accelerating agentic AI adoption and growing demand for decentralized AI rails.
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