Artificial intelligence-linked cryptocurrencies surged on Monday after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang laid out the company’s vision for the next phase of AI infrastructure during his keynote speech at Nvidia’s GTC developer conference.
Among the big movers were AI-focused blockchains The stock is up more than 10% in the past 24 hours, reaching its strongest level since late January. The FET token of decentralized AI project Artificial Superintelligence Alliance surged as much as 20% intraday before paring gains in the later session.
during this time — the identity-focused crypto project co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — rose nearly 10%, trading near $0.40, its strongest level since early March. GRASS, a decentralized network that lets users monetize unused internet bandwidth to train AI models, rose 13% to a new 2026 high.
The move came as Huang emphasized Nvidia’s central role in the global AI boom in his speech. During the keynote, he said the company expects a chip demand backlog worth about $1 trillion by 2027, with hyperscale cloud providers accounting for about 60% of its business.
Huang also highlighted the rapid rise of agentic AI systems, and praised the viral OpenClause project, which has gained popularity among developers in recent weeks. He said Nvidia worked to adapt the system into an enterprise-ready version called NemoClaw, which is designed to make autonomous AI agents safe for corporate use without exposing sensitive data.
While Huang did not reference crypto during the speech, a growing number of blockchain projects are betting that the next wave of AI agents will rely on crypto rails to autonomously conduct and coordinate transactions. Other projects are racing to create decentralized networks for computing power, AI training, and agent infrastructure, offering blockchain as an alternative to centralized AI platforms.
Shares of Nvidia (NVDA), widely seen as a pioneer of AI business, initially jumped about 2% during the keynote before retreating. The stock ultimately closed about 1.5% higher on the day.