AI News: Altcoin Boom Sends AI Sector Soaring, Story Leads

The AI sector is back in top form this week, with many of the most prominent AI tokens experiencing significant growth.

TL;DR:

Crypto mcap reaches $4T; BTC $122K, ETH $4,330; Greed Index at 62.
AI sector +9.2% WoW to $33.4B; still -52%; 11th of 22.
Top AI headlines: GPT-5, ASI Chain, Planck Layer-0, Kuvi–Altura.

Bitcoin (BTC) briefly reclaimed the $122K mark, Ethereum (ETH) hit a yearly high of $4,330, and the total crypto market capitalization (mcap) just hit an all-time high of $4 trillion.

The market shows renewed signs of life, while the CMC Fear and Greed Index sits at a modest 62, suggesting plenty of room for further growth.

That said, here’s how the AI sector developed over the last week.

AI Market Recap

The AI sector is back in top form this week, with many of the most prominent AI tokens experiencing significant growth.

Overall, the sector added an additional $2.9 billion to its market capitalization (mcap) after expanding by 9.2% week-on-week.

With an mcap of $33.4 billion, the sector is ~52% below its December 2024 all-time high.

Currently, the top 20 AI tokens are all heavily green, with some of the best performers gaining upwards of 10%.

These include:

Story (IP): +12%
Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (FET): +10.6%
Virtuals Protocol (VIRTUAL): +16.2%

Even more impressive gains were seen among smaller caps, particularly those in the sub-$100 million range.

This week’s top performers (with catalysts, where known) include:

siren (SIREN): +91.6% (unclear catalyst)
Tagger (TAG): +57% (following deal with Stables internet money network)
GRIFFAIN (GRIFFAIN): +38.6% (unclear catalyst)
Treasure (MAGIC): +31% (unclear catalyst)
PinLink (PIN): +26.8% (launch of Pinnacle RWA marketplace)

Did you miss our last AI sector update? Check it out here.

Despite its recent growth, the AI sector doesn’t count among this week’s best-performing sectors.

With its 8.9% increase in mcap-weighted category performance, it’s currently the 11th-best-performing sector tracked by DefiLlama, out of 22 sectors tracked by the platform. For comparison, Liquid Staking Governance tokens came in at first place, with a 28.9% mcap-weighted gain over the last week.

AI News Roundup

It was another big week for AI news, with major releases, developments, and upgrades hitting headlines.

Below, we’ve summarized some of the most significant to bring you up to speed:

OpenAI Ships GPT-5: OpenAI released GPT-5, a unified, faster model with stronger reasoning/coding and longer context. It’s rolling out to ChatGPT users and the API, with enterprise access next. Performance reviews are mixed, with the consensus suggesting it didn’t live up to the hype.

Vyvo Launches AI-Powered VAI OS for Health Data on Blockchain: Vyvo Smart Chain has unveiled VAI OS, an AI-driven “Life Co-Pilot” processing health data on-chain via Proof-of-Sensing, ensuring privacy, security, and user rewards, alongside plans for the upcoming VAI token launch.

ASI Alliance Teases ‘ASI Chain’: The Artificial Superintelligence Alliance flagged early access for ASI Chain, a sovereign, AI-native coordination layer aimed at decentralized agents, compute and data sharing—positioning for an agent-centric L1.

Planck Launches AI Layer-0: Planck unveiled a modular Layer-0 for decentralized AI & DePIN, bundling a global GPU network and cross-chain messaging (“Tunnel”) to power AI-native L1s/rollups and on-chain inference.