Oracle did what each legacy tech large goals of. In September, it introduced a $300 billion cloud deal wrapped round OpenAI, the most popular identify in software program, and watched its inventory rip increased.
Two months later, the market gave its verdict. Oracle has shed greater than $300 billion in market worth, buying and selling beneath its pre-AI announcement ranges, whereas reviews started calling it a “ChatGPT curse.”
Analysts are actually treating the mega deal as a case examine in what occurs when AI guarantees outrun the money flows which are speculated to assist them.
On the identical time, Cursor simply raised $2.3 billion at a $29.3 billion valuation. The corporate crossed $1 billion in annualized income this 12 months and greater than tripled its valuation since June.
The coding software vacuumed up enterprise capital on the promise that engineers would stay inside an AI pair programmer that may write many of the code for them.
A personal devtool startup and a public software program incumbent are immediately a part of the identical psychological spreadsheet as most L1 tokens, and buyers are actually asking a barely impolite query.
When AI can hand a three-year-old startup a $29.3 billion price ticket, does cash nonetheless want crypto in any respect, or does crypto simply get pulled into the identical commerce beneath a unique ticker?
The AI cash hose
A pleasant shut have a look at the insane funding numbers explains this temper.
World AI startup funding reached round $100 billion in 2024, roughly 80% greater than in 2023 and near a 3rd of all enterprise capital that 12 months. S&P World places generative AI funding at greater than $56 billion in 2024, practically double the prior 12 months.
The Stanford AI Index tracks personal funding in generative AI at $33.9 billion for 2024, greater than eight instances 2022. EY estimates that in simply the primary half of 2025, generative AI startups raised one other $49.2 billion.
Crypto remembers what that appears like. In 2021, the recent trades had been token issuance, DeFi yield, and metaverse fairness. In 2024 and 2025, the middle of gravity moved. The large checks went into coaching runs, knowledge facilities, and a small circle of basis mannequin labs. Barron’s counts roughly a 3rd of world VC going into AI names like xAI, Databricks, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
On the general public facet, corporations are elevating large debt piles to chase GPU capability. Oracle is reportedly lining up round $38 billion of bonds to fund its cloud buildout. Nvidia’s knowledge heart income has reshaped complete fairness indices. In order for you publicity to “future money flows from compute,” the very best beta now lives in AI infra and basis fashions.
That doesn’t imply liquidity vanished from crypto. It means marginal {dollars} are priced in opposition to a brand new benchmark. If a mid-size AI startup instructions a $30 billion valuation and OpenAI can speak about trillion-dollar capex plans with out being laughed out of the room, the bar for a $10 billion token with skinny real-world utilization will get increased.
AI tokens and the ASI experiment
Crypto did the logical factor: it tried to package deal AI inside tokens. The flagship effort was the Synthetic Superintelligence Alliance, a plan to merge SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol right into a single ASI token and model the entire stack as decentralized AI. Fetch.ai’s merger weblog set out a easy gross sales pitch in 2024. One treasury, one token, three initiatives that claimed to cowl brokers, knowledge, and fashions.
This labored for some time. Billions of {dollars} price of AGIX, FET, and OCEAN liquidity had been pointed on the identical narrative. Exchanges lined up spot and perpetual pairs for ASI. Retail holders bought migration bridges and one token that mapped cleanly to “AI” on a watchlist. It appeared like crypto had discovered a approach to compress a messy sector into one thing that might stay in a single line of a derivatives blotter.
Then Ocean walked.
In October, the Ocean Protocol Basis introduced its withdrawal from the alliance, asking to depeg OCEAN from ASI and relist it as a separate asset.
Ocean framed the exit as a matter of “voluntary affiliation.” Fetch.ai has since launched authorized motion, with courtroom filings tracing conversions of greater than 660 million OCEAN to FET and alleging damaged guarantees across the merger.
This little governance drama tells you one thing concerning the AI token commerce. It’s chasing the identical story because the personal AI increase, simply with extra volatility and principally no income. When ASI traded nicely, everybody needed in. When valuations cooled and neighborhood politics reemerged, the “alliance” reverted to being three cap tables with completely different agendas.
From a liquidity perspective, AI tokens really feel much less like a separate asset class and extra like a manner for current cash in crypto to shadow what is occurring in personal AI. Cursor’s newest spherical or Anthropic’s new funding from Amazon don’t transfer ASI on a strict foundation, however they set the emotional tone. Crypto merchants watch fairness offers and worth their AI baskets accordingly.
From Bitcoin mines to AI mannequin farms
The clearest merger between AI and crypto sits in energy contracts. Bitcoin miners spent a decade constructing knowledge facilities in cheap-energy areas, and AI hyperscalers are actually paying up for a similar megawatt base.
Bitfarms is probably the most express case. The corporate has introduced plans to wind down Bitcoin mining totally by 2027 and redeploy its infrastructure into AI and high-performance computing.
Its 18-megawatt facility in Washington state would be the first website transformed, with racks designed for Nvidia GB300-class servers and liquid cooling able to dealing with round 190 kilowatts per rack.
Bitfarms’ press launch describes a completely funded $128 million settlement with a big US knowledge heart accomplice. Administration claims that one AI facility might out-earn the corporate’s complete historic Bitcoin mining income.
Bitfarms will not be alone. Iris Power rebranded as IREN and is shifting its hydro-powered websites into AI knowledge facilities, with Bernstein analysis pointing to billions in anticipated income from Microsoft-backed GPU deployments.
Hut 8 talks overtly about being an influence first platform that may level 1,530 megawatts of deliberate capability to no matter workload pays greatest, with AI and HPC on the prime of the listing.
Core Scientific went far sufficient down this route that AI cloud supplier CoreWeave agreed a $9 billion all-stock deal to purchase it, aiming to lock up greater than a gigawatt of information heart energy for Nvidia-heavy clusters, earlier than shareholders pushed again.
The sample is similar in every of those instances. Bitcoin mining gave these companies low cost energy, grid connections, and generally hard-fought permits.
Then AI got here alongside and provided the next greenback per megawatt. For shareholders which have watched a number of halvings compress mining margins, routing power into GPU stacks clearly appears to be like like swapping a maturing carry commerce for development.
That is the place the “AI is consuming crypto liquidity” headline will get literal for Bitcoin. Each megawatt that strikes from SHA-256 to GB300 or H200 is a unit of power that not secures the community. Hash charge has continued to develop as new miners enter and older {hardware} is retired, however over time, the next share of low cost energy can be priced by AI’s willingness to pay.
When AI assaults the rails
There’s another junction between AI capital and crypto: safety.
In November, Anthropic revealed a report on what it known as the primary large-scale espionage marketing campaign orchestrated by an AI agent. A China-linked group jailbroke the corporate’s Claude Code product and used it to automate reconnaissance, exploit improvement, credential harvesting, and lateral motion throughout roughly 30 sufferer organizations.
Among the assaults succeeded. Some failed as a result of the mannequin hallucinated pretend credentials and stole paperwork that had been already public. However probably the most alarming half was that many of the assault chain was pushed by natural-language prompts reasonably than a room filled with operators.
Crypto exchanges and custodians sit proper in the midst of that blast radius. They already depend on AI inside buying and selling surveillance, buyer assist, and fraud monitoring.
As extra operations transfer into automated brokers, the identical instruments that route orders or look ahead to cash laundering will grow to be targets. A dense focus of keys and sizzling wallets makes them engaging to any group that may level a Claude-sized agent at a community map.
The regulatory response to that form of occasion is not going to care whether or not the affected venue trades Nvidia fairness, Bitcoin, or each. If a serious AI-driven breach hits an enormous alternate, the coverage dialog will deal with AI and crypto as a single danger floor that sits on prime of vital monetary infrastructure.
So is AI actually consuming crypto liquidity?
The sincere reply is that AI is doing one thing extra attention-grabbing. It’s setting the value of danger for something that touches compute.
Enterprise cash which may as soon as have chased L1s is now funding basis fashions and AI infra. Public fairness buyers are weighing 30% drawdowns in Oracle in opposition to the possibility {that a} $300 billion OpenAI cloud deal actually does repay.
Personal markets are completely happy to worth a devtool like Cursor on par with a mid-cap token community. Bitcoin miners are rebranding as knowledge heart operators and signing long-term contracts with hyperscalers. Token initiatives try to bolt “AI” onto their ticker as a result of that’s the place the thrill sits.
Taking a look at this market from the depths of the crypto trade makes it appear like a meals chain the place AI merely devours all the pieces.
However alas, it’s at all times extra nuanced and complex than it appears to be like. Over the previous two years, AI has grow to be the reference commerce for future computing, and that commerce drags Bitcoin infrastructure, AI tokens, and even alternate safety into the identical story.
So, liquidity will not be leaving outright. It’s transferring round, pricing all the pieces else in opposition to the one sector that satisfied markets to fund trillion-dollar capex plans on a promise and a demo.
