The global shortage of computing power and the explosive surge in AI investment have made “compute” the most scarce and most predictable growth infrastructure in the digital age, while blockchain provides the only mechanism that allows it to become assetized, verifiable, and tradable.
The emergence of verifiable computation, model assetization, and the agent economy transforms AI from a consumer tool into an on-chain “digital laborer” capable of directly generating transactions, strategies, and states, pushing the on-chain economy into a productivity-driven phase.
Capital is betting on AI × Crypto because it possesses infrastructure attributes comparable to electricity and cloud computing, and it is able to form the most certain, irreversible, and structurally growing global computational economy of the next decade.
AI × Crypto is transforming computing power, models, and intelligent agents from tools into on-chain productive forces that can be priced, enabling the digital economy for the first time to possess a sustainable growth structure similar to that of the real economy.
AI × Crypto is rising from an industry narrative to a new infrastructure layer of the digital economy, and its significance goes far beyond superficial descriptions such as “AI on-chain” or “distributed computing.” As global demand for computing power grows explosively, data center costs continue to rise, and GPU supply remains constrained by geopolitics and manufacturing bottlenecks, computation has become the scarcest and fastest-growing strategic resource. Gartner predicts that global AI spending will reach USD 1.48 trillion in 2025 and surpass USD 2 trillion in 2026, with computing power and AI-optimized hardware being the core areas of growth. Against this backdrop, blockchain’s verifiable computation, open incentive mechanisms, and task scheduling capabilities allow global computing power to be digitalized, assetized, and made liquid, enabling AI for the first time to become an “economic producer” on-chain.
On-chain Computation Turns AI from a Tool into an Economic Producer
For a long time, AI’s computation and inference processes have been enclosed within centralized data centers, where its computing consumption was regarded as a cost rather than an asset, and its computational outcomes lacked verifiability and traceability. However, on-chain verifiable computation (ZK, MPC, trusted execution proofs, and other technologies) completely rewrites this structure, enabling computational tasks to be submitted, distributed, verified, and settled in a standardized manner across a global network, thereby forming a digital production process similar to traditional industrial assembly lines, and allowing “computation” for the first time to possess measurability and pricing attributes akin to energy.
When AI’s inference, generation, and evaluation behaviors can be audited and economically incentivized in task form, AI is no longer a one-way tool relied upon by users, but becomes an active producer in the on-chain economy. It can undertake a series of on-chain labor tasks traditionally performed by humans or scripts, such as high-frequency market making and asset rebalancing, NFT generation and valuation, on-chain strategy execution and cross-chain arbitrage, data cleaning and pattern recognition, content generation and governance assistance, and more. As a result, AI agents become “digital laborers” in the on-chain economy, and their actions create high-frequency, sustainable, and accumulative economic activity, making the growth of the on-chain economy no longer fully dependent on user expansion but instead relying on the compounding productivity gains brought by the scale of intelligent agents, the density of computational tasks, and model asset licensing.
AI × Crypto is Building a Complete Computational Value Chain Covering Resources, Tools, and Behaviors
As computational resources become assetized, the on-chain computational economy is beginning to expand upward from single computing supply, gradually forming a complete value chain that includes the resource layer, the model layer, and the agent layer, giving the digital economy a self-operating production structure rather than one driven by short-term speculation or liquidity.
1. Resource Layer: Computing Power Becomes the Energy Infrastructure of the Digital World
Grand View Research notes that the global AI market will grow from USD 279.2 billion in 2024 to USD 34.97 trillion by 2033, with an increasing proportion of investment flowing into computing power, GPUs, and data center infrastructure, making computing power a strategic resource as important as electricity in the digital age. Decentralized computing networks therefore become the key incremental supply amid global compute shortages.
2. Tool Layer: Models Begin to Possess Asset Attributes of Authorization, Composability, and Sustainable Revenue
Models are no longer merely technological products but become priced tools with invocation rights, licensing fees, and combinable yields, able to integrate naturally with on-chain payment and incentive systems, thus becoming “means of production” in the digital economy.
3. Behavior Layer: AI Agents Become the “Intelligent Labor Class” On-Chain
AI agents generate transactions, generate strategies, generate states, and generate governance signals, forming a source of continuously expanding on-chain economic activity and enabling the on-chain economy for the first time to have a compounding and sustainable production structure.
This value chain signifies that the on-chain economy is moving from the era of “recording assets” to the era of “producing assets,” completing the true industrialization of the digital world.
Why Capital is Firmly Betting on AI × Crypto: Because It Possesses “Infrastructure-Level” Deterministic Growth
Capital favors resources that show long-term growth, irreplaceability, and structural demand — and the computational economy meets all three criteria.
- •The scale of AI models and the volume of inference calls create an infinitely expanding demand for computing power.
- •The supply of GPUs and AI semiconductors is restricted by manufacturing chains, energy, and geopolitics.
- •AI’s dependence on computation is far stronger and more persistent than the internet era’s dependence on bandwidth.
Gartner’s projections further illustrate this trend:
- •AI application software spending will reach USD 172 billion in 2025.
- •AI semiconductor spending will reach USD 209.1 billion.
- •Investment in AI-optimized servers and GPUs will surpass USD 500 billion between 2025–2026.
- •AI smartphones, AI PCs, and AI Agent devices will become the core drivers of the next personal hardware cycle.
This means the computational economy is not an industry sector, but an “infrastructure-level market” akin to electricity, cloud computing, and mobile internet — one with long-term deterministic growth.
Meanwhile, AI × Crypto simultaneously offers:
- •A global, open computing supply system
- •Verifiable execution results
- •Task scheduling mechanisms that do not rely on centralized data service companies
- •Programmable economic incentives
- •Assetization capabilities that are naturally compatible with financial markets
These characteristics make the computational economy the most structurally and deterministically growing curve in the eyes of capital over the next decade.
Conclusion: AI × Crypto is Establishing the True “Productivity Layer” of Digital Civilization
The evolution of blockchain over the past decade answered the question of “how assets are recorded and exchanged,” while AI × Crypto begins answering “how the digital economy is produced.” Computing power is shifting from a static resource to a liquid asset, models are shifting from closed black boxes to licensable tools, and intelligent agents are evolving from passive scripts into digital laborers capable of continuously generating economic activity. Thus, the on-chain economy gains a genuine set of production relations for the first time, enabling compounding growth based on labor and resources — similar to the real economy — rather than relying on short-term speculation.
AI × Crypto is not a new sector, but the most fundamental, irreversible, and structurally powerful infrastructure of the digital age. It reorganizes resources, redefines labor, and reshapes growth logic. When intelligent agents become the primary producers on-chain, the digital economy will shift from “asset-driven” to “productivity-driven,” entering a new cycle of system-level expansion.