Executive summary
AI tokens are re-emerging as one of crypto’s most important second-quarter narratives, with the sector crossing $25 billion in market value in May with roughly $3.34 billion in 24-hour trading volume. NEAR has become the standout large-cap beneficiary, with CoinGecko showing NEAR up about 75.9% over 30 days and 29.6% over seven days at the time of writing. Akash Network, a decentralized compute marketplace, is up roughly 72% year-to-date, supported by renewed demand for GPU and AI infrastructure exposure.
The key question for institutional allocators is whether this cycle is materially different from the 2023–24 AI token rally, when the trade often looked meme-adjacent and loosely connected to usage. The answer is more constructive, with caveats. The strongest projects are now being assessed through infrastructure, compute demand, model coordination, data availability and revenue capture. The risk is that price is still moving faster than fundamentals. The opportunity sits in tokens that can convert AI usage into durable cash flow, token sinks or network demand.
