AI Tokens Pump on Positive Industry News as X Corp Announces xAI Shareholding

Artificial intelligence (AI) tokens climbed over the past weekend following news from AI companies about the future of the sector. X Corp owner and Chairman Elon Musk said on Sunday that the company’s shareholders would have a 25% stake in xAI, Musk’s new AI company.

Another factor that pumped AI stock over the last few days is news that former OpenAI CEO Sam Altman could return to the company after he was forced out last week. According to reports, some top investors are currently working on pushing for Altman’s return. Unfortunately, there is no confirmation as the company has already named former Twitch CEO Emmett Shear as CEO. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella already announced in an X post that Altman and former OpenAI president Greg Brockman will lead a new advanced AI research team at Microsoft.

As of this writing, CoinGecko data states that Bittensor’s TAO has jumped 84.8% over the last week, with Render (RNDR) climbing 46.3%. Other jumps recorded were Fetch.ai at 37.9%, Akash Network at 55.1%, and CorgiAI at 62.1%. Even larger spikes were recorded, with Synesis One (SNS) at 181.1% and nuco.cloud (NCDT) at 104.9%.

AI tokens are still far from large-scale popularity because widespread and public interest in the sector is relatively recent. However, there was a recorded increase in the number of AI tokens as well as their popularity after OpenAI released ChatGPT last November. Many believe that the current interest and increased activity in the AI token space points to a high chance of a bull run in the future. Observers have compared this to how decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens drove a similar bull run from 2020 to 2022.

Grok-Themed AI Tokens

Earlier this month, Musk’s xAI launched “Grok”, an AI chatbot that reportedly performs better than ChatGPT 3.5 in academic tests. In an official xAI publication, the company noted that Grok can outperform similar AI tools because it can access real-time knowledge via the X platform. The company said Grok can answer “spicy questions” that most other AI systems reject. In addition, xAI notes that Grok’s design allows it to “answer questions with a bit of wit”, adding that the chatbot has a rebellious streak. Furthermore, xAI says Grok will initially only be available to a limited number of users in the United States.

Within a few days of the launch, anonymous developers launched many different GROK tokens on several blockchains. Last Monday, one of the tokens, GROK, had more than 13,000 holders and grossed $150 million. However, the coin lost $100 million worth of its market capitalization after news spread that the developers were previously involved in failed projects. To gain confidence, Grok has reportedly burned $1.7 million worth of tokens to significantly reduce supply. Grok then announced that it burned all tokens from the deployer address. Burned tokens were reportedly about 180 million, worth nearly $2 million. The project had pumped 13,000% within nine days.

In August, several AI tokens pumped following news of chipmaker Nvidia Corp’s (NASDAQ: NVDA) impressive figures reported for fiscal Q2 2024.