Every startup wants attention.
But most are failing spectacularly at getting it—because they’re still playing by old rules.
Meanwhile, AI is rewriting the entire game.
Sam Altman is talking about raising $5 trillion for AGI. Europe just launched a €200B AI fund. Investors are throwing hundreds of billions into AI startups—while AI coins are quietly making a comeback.
And yet, most founders are still pitching like it’s 2020.
🔹 They’re flooding the market with low-effort AI agents that nobody wants.
🔹 They’re clinging to Web3 hype cycles that no one cares about anymore.
🔹 They’re burning time on infrastructure when the real opportunity is in products that actually solve problems.
The result? A mess of half-baked AI projects drowning in noise—while the smart founders move fast and take over.
Big Money Is Pouring into AI—Where’s It Going?
💰 AI startups raised a record-breaking $110B in 2024. That’s up 62% from last year, while the rest of tech shrunk by 12%.
🚀 Crypto AI is lagging behind, but it won’t be for long. Remember when everyone wrote off Solana in 2022? Those who kept building are now sitting on massive gains.
The question is: Will Crypto AI see the same boom?
Right now, infrastructure projects like Story Protocol (tokenizing IP) and Nillion (privacy for AI agents) are gaining momentum. But the real gold rush?
It’s not in infra. It’s in applications.
The founders who build AI agents that actually work—not just “agent slop” thrown together with a ChatGPT wrapper—will own the future.
AI Token Markets Are Waking Up
Last week, AI agent tokens exploded:
📈 ARC +84% (thanks to Arc Forge)
📈 AI16Z +57%
📈 AVA +49%
Not everyone won, though.
📉 NEUR -37% (despite launching new sniper detection features)
📉 MOSS -26%
This feels a lot like early Solana. Big swings, but founders who stay in the game will dominate when the market turns.
Arc Forge: AI Token Launches, Rebuilt for the Real World
Everyone’s talking about Arc Forge. Here’s why:
🔥 It fixes token liquidity. Forget insane price swings—Meteora’s “price bins” system lets projects do more with less capital.
🔥 Snipers beware. The new launch model reduces bot abuse and gives real users a fair shot.
🔥 Every trade flows through ARC. This isn’t just another launchpad—it’s a real ecosystem play that drives demand.
The first project on Arc Forge? AskJimmy—built by hedge fund pros with $1B+ AUM experience.
Their pitch? AI-powered trading strategies.
📈 Spot, Perps, and Options on platforms like Hyperliquid and Uniswap.
📈 Vaults for fully automated trading—set it and forget it.
The launch wasn’t perfect—snipers still got in, and a $700K withdrawal from the pool raised some eyebrows. But this is the future of AI-powered trading.
Story Protocol: The $61 Trillion Bet on AI & IP Tokenization
The public mainnet is LIVE.
The pitch? IP as a programmable asset class.
💡 Decentralized ownership, exchange, and monetization of intellectual property.
💡 IPFi (IP Finance) turns IP into a financial instrument.
💡 Real-world asset (RWA) tokenization lets creators earn automated royalties.
It’s a bold move—but will creators actually use it?
Early incentives include:
✅ 58.4% of the token supply for ecosystem rewards.
✅ A 30-day Day 1 Rewards Portal for early adopters.
✅ Strategic collabs with ElizaOS to let AI agents monetize IP.
Success depends on adoption. If developers, AI companies, and creators don’t buy in, it’s just another Web3 ghost town.
Other AI Projects Making Waves
📢 TaoFi just secured funding from DCG & Pantera. Their goal? Merge AI and DeFi for autonomous finance.
📢 Nous Research launched DeepHermes-3 Preview—AI with toggleable reasoning for more accurate, transparent decision-making.
📢 Naptha AI unveiled its open-source framework for scaling multi-agent AI systems.
📢 FLock launched Moonbase, an AI model marketplace where users can train, deploy, and monetize AI agents.
Meanwhile, AI consumer apps are making history:
📈 Shell’s TGE was 11,425% oversubscribed, raising $97M in seconds.
📈 Virtuals just launched its token on Solana, with cross-chain support on Base.
And on the Web2 AI front:
📢 Sam Altman rejected Elon Musk’s $97.4B buyout attempt.
📢 Anthropic’s new Economic Index tracks AI’s impact on global markets.
📢 Zyphra launched an open-source high-fidelity voice cloning model.
The battle for AI dominance is just getting started.
The AI Attention Game: What Every Founder Needs to Understand
🚨 Everyone is chasing AI.
But most are doing it wrong.
They’re building useless AI wrappers, launching pointless AI coins, and wasting time on infra when the real money is in applications.
Here’s how to win:
🔹 Forget hype. Build AI agents that solve real problems.
🔹 Skip the buzzwords. If your pitch is filled with “DEFAI” and “AGI launchpads,” you’ve already lost.
🔹 Follow the money. AI startups are raising billions while bad projects die. Learn from the winners.
This is the biggest shift since the internet.
The only question is: Will you own it—or get left behind?
