Ever since the launch of ChatGPT back in November 2022, the race has been on to find cryptocurrencies that can leverage the full power of artificial intelligence. Some of these have already soared in value over the past year, and the current thinking is that at least a handful of AI crypto tokens could eventually post 10 times, 100 times, or even 1,000 times gains.
The only problem, of course, is that it can be difficult to separate the signal from the noise. The hype and speculation around AI make picking winners difficult. With that in mind, here are three artificial intelligence cryptocurrencies that currently stand out from the pack.
Render
At the top of the list is Render (RNDR -7.46%), which already has a $3.6 billion valuation, making it one of just a handful of AI crypto tokens that have surpassed $1 billion in market cap. Year to date, Render is up nearly 100%, and much of that gain has been driven by excitement around its core business model.
Render is all about "GPU Compute," or the ability to provide enormous amounts of computing power via graphics processing units (GPUs). Formerly, this meant computing power for artists, developers, gamers, and web studios, all of which needed to "render" graphics for games, videos, or other entertainment projects. But now it means computing power for AI projects. If you're launching a new machine learning project, for example, you're going to need a lot of computing power to train it on a large data set.
So, the thinking here is that Render will become increasingly valuable as long as it can continue to deliver computing resources to power the AI economy. My main caveat, though, is that the moat for Render may not be as wide as some people think. The "GPU Compute" business model can be replicated fairly easily. And, indeed, Render has a long list of potential rivals in the crypto world.
Fetch.ai
Fetch.ai (FET -6.71%) is up a head-spinning 240% year to date, giving it a nearly $2 billion market cap. Fetch.ai takes a different approach to AI, calling itself "an open platform for the new AI economy." What that means in layperson's terms is that Fetch.ai is the place you go if you need to buy or sell data sets, or if you need to hire an AI agent (basically, a super-smart AI chatbot) to complete a highly specialized online task. It's essentially a giant marketplace for everything AI-related.
Image source: Getty Images.
Conceptually, Fetch.ai makes a lot of sense. Getting access to data sets in a single marketplace will make it easier to build sophisticated machine learning models, and being able to hire AI agents on a per-task basis should make all of us more productive in our everyday lives. According to Fetch.ai, the biggest applications will be in data-intensive fields such as transportation, finance, energy, and travel. So there's clearly a tremendous market opportunity here.
SingularityNET
Finally, there's SingularityNET (AGIX -6.64%), which is up 182% year to date and currently has a $1.2 billion market cap. Similar to Fetch.ai, SingularityNET has the goal of monetizing AI products and services. But SingularityNET is less focused on generative AI and more focused on artificial general intelligence (AGI). And, as a result, SingularityNET hopes to become "the knowledge layer of the internet."
That sounds like a lot of Silicon Valley venture capital hype, but SingularityNET actually has a world-class AI research team that could make it happen. The name of the token is a reference to the "technological singularity" -- the hypothetical moment in time when a single computer will become smarter than all of humanity combined. As the team behind SingularityNET sees it, all of this enormous computing power will need to be shared with humanity. And that's where the "the knowledge layer of the internet" concept starts to make a lot more sense.
That's why I think SingularityNET is the type of crypto token that has 1,000 times upside potential in the long run. This is the crypto token to own if you fully buy into the concept of the technological singularity. The only problem is that it could take several years to see this upside potential develop. According to Ray Kurzweil, the AI guru currently at Alphabet's Google who popularized the term "technological singularity" nearly two decades ago, this might not happen until the year 2029.
Before you invest in AI
Just keep in mind, there is always a trade-off between risk and reward. While the upside potential of some AI crypto tokens could be as high as 100 times or 1,000 times, the downside risk is that they could just as easily go to zero.
Right now, we still don't know if even the top AI crypto tokens have any long-term staying power. The pace of AI innovation is so fast right now that it seems like a groundbreaking new development comes along every few weeks. So before you invest in an AI crypto token, make sure you understand all of the steps it is taking to stay one step ahead of the competition.
