AI Coins Outperform Market as Ex-OpenAI CEO Embarks on New Venture

Musk’s AI Launch Pushed Tokens

“X,” under Elon Musk’s guidance, released a beta version of an AI assistant named Grok. Musk has said many times that neither he nor any of his companies have any plans to ever release a token. Following the launch, there was a significant surge in AI-related tokens on various platforms, including over 400 tokens, many named after Grok, particularly on Base, a layer-2 network on Ethereum. This surge reflects the growing interest and speculative investment in AI-related digital assets.

AI Coins Are Up

Amid sideways trading crypto markets, AI tokens and projects are standing out for their performance. The Graph (GRT) serves as a protocol designed to index and query data from networks such as Ethereum and IPFS. It plays a crucial role in the decentralised finance (DeFi) and broader Web3 ecosystem by allowing the creation and use of open APIs, known as subgraphs. 

GRT has gained 14% week on week, continuing its impressive performance of the past few weeks. However, overall GRT is still down 95% from its all-time high in February 2021, when it was trading at US $2.34 (AU$ 3.02) compared to the current US$ 0.14 (AU$ 0.21).

Compared to GRT, the situation for Fetch.ai (FET) is different. Fetch is a decentralised platform that democratises access to artificial intelligence by providing a permissionless network where users can securely access and use datasets with autonomous AI. FET is actually still up over 32% from its launch in 2019, currently making a 45% gain week-on-week.

“The Mission Continues”

Meanwhile, Microsoft has hired Sam Altman, the co-founder of OpenAI, following his unexpected dismissal from the company known for its ChatGPT chatbot. Despite pressure from Microsoft and other investors, OpenAI has appointed Emmett Shear, former CEO of Twitch (owned by Amazon), as its new CEO. Altman was removed by the board amid concerns that he was misjudging the risks of artificial intelligence and deviating from OpenAI’s mission. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Altman, along with OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman and others, will continue his work on AI at Microsoft.

Over 700 of OpenAI’s 770 employees have threatened to leave and join Microsoft unless the current board resigns, following the ousting of Altman. They demand Altman’s reinstatement and assert that Microsoft is willing to hire all OpenAI employees. This standoff has cast uncertainty over OpenAI’s future.