AI agent market cap down almost 50% across January

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—by Protos Staff

The market cap of the AI agent industry has reportedly tumbled massively from its January highs amid news of a cheaper, more efficient new model.  

According to data collected by cookie.fun, the industry’s market cap, which stood at $10.37 billion at the beginning of the year, has shed more than $4.5 billion since January 6. A 19% slide in the past 24 hours has seen the figure settle — for now — at somewhere in the region of $5.7 billion.

Elsewhere, CoinGecko claims that the figure currently sits at a slightly healthier $9.74 billion. However, these figures also point to a 22% decrease in the last 24 hours.

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AI agents in the crypto industry are used to automate the process of trading and interacting with blockchains. Agents AI16Z, GOAT, and VIRTUALS are down 47%, 54%, and 42% over the past 30 days respectively. 

China’s DeepSeek eats into OpenAI’s lead

Over the weekend, a Chinese AI model called DeepSeek caused waves in the AI industry and led to a drop in various tech stocks. Its creators claim that the $6 million system uses a fraction of the processing power of OpenAI. 

Last week, Donald Trump declared at the World Economic Forum that the US would become the “world capital of artificial intelligence and crypto.” His new government also promised big investment with the government-backed AI project Stargate planning to exclusively serve OpenAI and spend $500 billion over the next four years.

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Not only that, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman claimed that the very social contracts of society would have to change due to the power of AI. The AI industry involves exorbitant amounts of money to cover research, hardware, and the costs of an increasing demand for electricity.

DeepSeek has since overtaken OpenAI in US Google search terms and has also beaten OpenAI’s ChatGPT to the number one spot on Apple’s App Store.

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