In 2025, nearly half of every dollar invested in crypto companies by venture capitalists went towards firms that integrate artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, marking a significant increase from the previous year. Binance Research noted that AI is becoming an integral part of crypto's product and infrastructure stack, citing data from Silicon Valley Bank. This shift is evident in the transition from AI 'co-pilots' to 'agents', where agents can monitor conditions and execute actions, reducing the gap between insight and execution.
The trend is part of a broader surge in AI adoption, with Crunchbase data showing AI companies raised $242 billion in the first quarter of 2026. Crypto platforms have been at the forefront of this push, leveraging always-on markets and programmable infrastructure to deploy AI systems more quickly than traditional finance. For instance, on Binance's AI Pro beta, nearly half of the activity was triggered by the system rather than users, highlighting the growing use of AI tools that run in the background.
While the adoption of AI solutions varies across exchanges and brokers, risk management, market signals, and fraud detection are becoming standard, with user-facing tools like copy trading and portfolio advisors present in nearly half to over two-thirds of them. Several major platforms have introduced agentic products, bringing AI closer to monitoring and execution, and shifting the competitive landscape towards owning users' decision-making loops.