Oracle did what each legacy tech large desires of. In September, it introduced a $300 billion cloud deal wrapped round OpenAI, the most well liked identify in software program, and watched its inventory rip greater.
Two months later, the market gave its verdict. Oracle has shed greater than $300 billion in market worth, buying and selling under its pre-AI announcement ranges, whereas stories started calling it a “ChatGPT curse.”
Analysts at the moment are treating the mega deal as a case examine in what occurs when AI guarantees outrun the money flows which might be 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 yr and greater than tripled its valuation since June.
The coding device vacuumed up enterprise capital on the promise that engineers would reside inside an AI pair programmer that will write a lot of the code for them.
A non-public devtool startup and a public software program incumbent are immediately a part of the identical psychological spreadsheet as most L1 tokens, and buyers at the moment are 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 special ticker?
The AI cash hose
A pleasant shut take a look at the insane funding numbers explains this temper.
International AI startup funding reached round $100 billion in 2024, roughly 80% greater than in 2023 and near a 3rd of all enterprise capital that yr. S&P International places generative AI funding at greater than $56 billion in 2024, almost double the prior yr.
The Stanford AI Index tracks personal funding in generative AI at $33.9 billion for 2024, greater than eight occasions 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 have 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 aspect, firms 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 total fairness indices. If you need publicity to “future money flows from compute,” the best beta now lives in AI infra and basis fashions.
That doesn’t imply liquidity vanished from crypto. It means marginal {dollars} are priced towards a brand new benchmark. If a mid-size AI startup instructions a $30 billion valuation and OpenAI can discuss 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 greater.
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 have been pointed on the identical narrative. Exchanges lined up spot and perpetual pairs for ASI. Retail holders received migration bridges and one token that mapped cleanly to “AI” on a watchlist. It appeared like crypto had discovered a solution to compress a messy sector into one thing that might reside 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 court docket 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 growth, simply with extra volatility and mainly no income. When ASI traded effectively, everybody wished in. When valuations cooled and group politics reemerged, the “alliance” reverted to being three cap tables with totally different agendas.
From a liquidity standpoint, AI tokens really feel much less like a separate asset class and extra like a means for present cash in crypto to shadow what is going on 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 at the moment are paying up for a similar megawatt base.
Bitfarms is essentially 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 companion. Administration claims that one AI facility might out-earn the corporate’s total historic Bitcoin mining income.
Bitfarms shouldn’t 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 finest, with AI and HPC on the prime of the checklist.
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 identical in every of those instances. Bitcoin mining gave these corporations low-cost energy, grid connections, and generally hard-fought permits.
Then AI got here alongside and provided a better greenback per megawatt. For shareholders which have watched a number of halvings compress mining margins, routing vitality into GPU stacks clearly seems to be like swapping a maturing carry commerce for progress.
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 vitality that now not secures the community. Hash fee has continued to develop as new miners enter and older {hardware} is retired, however over time, a better share of low-cost energy can be priced by AI’s willingness to pay.
When AI assaults the rails
There may be yet one more junction between AI capital and crypto: safety.
In November, Anthropic printed 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 growth, credential harvesting, and lateral motion throughout roughly 30 sufferer organizations.
Among the assaults succeeded. Some failed as a result of the mannequin hallucinated faux credentials and stole paperwork that have been already public. However essentially the most alarming half was that a lot of the assault chain was pushed by natural-language prompts somewhat than a room filled with operators.
Crypto exchanges and custodians sit proper in the course 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 change into targets. A dense focus of keys and scorching wallets makes them engaging to any group that may level a Claude-sized agent at a community map.
The regulatory response to that type of occasion won’t care whether or not the affected venue trades Nvidia fairness, Bitcoin, or each. If a significant AI-driven breach hits a giant trade, the coverage dialog will deal with AI and crypto as a single threat floor that sits on prime of essential monetary infrastructure.
So is AI actually consuming crypto liquidity?
The trustworthy reply is that AI is doing one thing extra fascinating. It’s setting the value of threat for something that touches compute.
Enterprise cash that may as soon as have chased L1s is now funding basis fashions and AI infra. Public fairness buyers are weighing 30% drawdowns in Oracle towards the possibility {that a} $300 billion OpenAI cloud deal actually does repay.
Personal markets are joyful 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 are attempting to bolt “AI” onto their ticker as a result of that’s the place the joy sits.
Taking a look at this market from the depths of the crypto business makes it seem like a meals chain the place AI merely devours every little thing.
However alas, it’s at all times extra nuanced and sophisticated than it seems to be. Over the previous two years, AI has change into the reference commerce for future computing, and that commerce drags Bitcoin infrastructure, AI tokens, and even trade safety into the identical story.
So, liquidity shouldn’t be leaving outright. It’s shifting round, pricing every little thing else towards the one sector that satisfied markets to fund trillion-dollar capex plans on a promise and a demo.