TL;DR:
AI sector +6.1% WoW; Story (IP) led gains.
Agents mostly green; volume concentrated among few names.
Key news: IP treasury move, x402 agent payments, Aethir rewards, Vitalik warning.
Things are looking up for the crypto market. All signs suggest the Fed will cut rates this week, while technical indicators suggest traders are beginning to switch to a risk-on approach to investing.
The CMC Altcoin Season Index is closing in on its yearly high while none of the 30 cycle-top indicators tracked by CoinMarketCap are flashing red.
On that note, here’s what happened in the AI sector this week.
AI Market Recap
Despite the recent downturn, the crypto AI sector posted significant returns since our last update, gaining a further 6.1% week-on-week.
A decent chunk of this growth is attributed to the success of Story (IP), which outperformed all other large-cap AI tokens by a wide margin with its 15.5% weekly gain.
That said, a handful of small caps put on a show this week, with several tokens gaining upwards of 100%. The best performers and their catalysts (if known) include:
Unibase (UB): +219.9% (Binance Alpha listing, Futures launch, and airdrop)
Nosana (NOS): +141.5% (unclear catalyst)
Quack AI (Q): +141.5% (exchange listings [Binance/KuCoin] plus exchange airdrop)
Aethir (ATH): +72.3% (technical breakout from double bottom)
Smaller AI tokens also featured heavily among this week's trending list, with seven of the top 10 trending tokens sized under a $100 million market capitalization (mcap).
Source: Top AI Tokens Page
That said, a small cohort of tokens suffered heavy losses this week, with several assets down by over 20%.
The AI Agent subsector continued its bullish momentum with the majority of major AI Agent tokens in the green this week. Momentum continued, though activity remained concentrated among a few names.
Source: Artemis
Zooming out, we find that the AI sector is now the second-best performing sector when measured by the change in fully diluted market capitalization (FDMC). The sector saw its weighted average FDMC climb by 14.9% month-on-month (MoM), placing it just behind privacy coins (+21%) by monthly returns.
AI News Roundup
Another week, another wave of major developments in the AI space. Below, we recap some of the most significant stories to bring you up to speed.
Story’s ‘IP Strategy’ Puts $IP in Corporate Treasuries: Nasdaq-listed Heritage Distilling unveiled “IP Strategy,” a regulated treasury vehicle centered on Story Protocol’s $IP, coinciding with fresh highs and rising volumes.
