AI sector lost $5.2B market cap; many tokens down >25%.
TL;DR:
- Trump’s 50% tariffs sparked crypto plunge; Bitcoin fell to ~$103K.
- AI sector lost $5.2B market cap; many tokens down >25%.
- Grok-Telegram confusion; Donut raised $7M; Safello bets on Bittensor.
Tariff turmoil hit markets again this week after Trump announced that China had violated its deal and raised tariffs on steel and aluminum to 50%.
In response, Bitcoin (BTC) hit lows of ~$103K, and the rest of the crypto market followed its trajectory.
AI Sector Recap
Following a largely bullish May, the AI sector has now given back most of its recent gains and is trending downward.
Source: Top AI Tokens Page
The sector shed $5.2 billion from its market capitalization (mcap), falling to $33.3 billion.
The vast majority of popular AI tokens are in the red this week, with some of the worst-affected assets losing upwards of 30%, including:
- GRIFFAIN (GRIFFAIN): -32.9%
- AI Rig Complex (ARC): -32.3%
- Grass (GRASS): -29%
- Saga (SAGA): -25.4%
The AI Agent subsector isn’t looking too hot either. Most prominent AI agent tokens are down week-on-week, with leaders like Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL) and ai16z (AI16Z) down 11.7% and 23.1%, respectively.
Less than 10% of prominent AI tokens bucked the downtrend and remained green this week. Some of the most resilient tokens include:
- Flock.io (FLOCK): +174.9% (recently listed on Upbit and Bithumb)
- Livepeer (LPT): +48.5% (following Upbit listing)
- DeXe (DEXE): +12.1% (no clear catalyst)
- Natix Network (NATIX): +10.5% (launched a subnet on Bittensor)
Source: Artemis
Despite being among the best-performing sectors over the last month, the AI sector now counts among the worst-performing sectors over the past seven days, with a 12.4% decline in fully diluted market capitalization.
AI News Roundup
A wave of heavy headlines hit news outlets this week as the AI sector picked up momentum.
We’ve summarized some of the most significant stories below to get you up to speed.
Grok-Telegram Deal Stirs Confusion: Telegram announced a $300M partnership to embed xAI’s Grok bot for its billion users and share subscription revenue. However, hours later, Elon Musk said no contract had been signed, fuelling transparency and data-privacy backlash.
Donut Bags $7M for Agentic Browser: AI-crypto startup Donut raised $7 million from Hongshan, BITKRAFT and HackVC to build a Solana-based browser whose algorithms read webpages and autonomously execute on-chain actions.
Safello Bets on TAO: Nordic exchange Safello quietly accumulated 229 TAO in two days, lifting its treasury to nearly 700 tokens, alongside BTC and ETH. It also set up subsidiary Safello Labs to support the growth of the Bittensor ecosystem.
Grayscale Introduces AI Crypto Sector Benchmark: Grayscale unveiled a report defining the AI-crypto sector, highlighting Bittensor’s upcoming halving this year, positioning TAO as the largest AI asset by market cap, and underscoring growing investor focus on decentralized AI incentives. (source)
>> That’s all for this week’s AI recap. Join us next week for another dose of AI news, developments, and analyses.
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