AI Compute Tokens Surge Indicate Expansion in AI Infrastructure and Liquidity Market

Key evidence

1. Over the past 72 hours, AI-related tokens such as RNDR, AKT, IO, FET, and TAO have experienced notable price increases, reflecting rising demand for AI compute and decentralized GPU infrastructure. These developments coincide with measurable on-chain capacity growth and increased network usage within the AI ecosystem.
2. Render (RNDR) surged 14.6% WoW to $7.25 following Nvidia’s record AI revenue and renewed retail interest in decentralized GPU rendering, as reported by CoinGecko. Akash Network (AKT) increased 9.8% in 48 hours to $4.04 after the launch of its v2.0 testnet, which introduces GPU marketplace features and H100 support, according to Akash’s blog. io.net’s network capacity grew to over 8,500 connected GPUs by February 19, up from approximately 5,000 in early February, indicating accelerated onboarding of decentralized compute resources, as per io.net dashboard. Bittensor (TAO) rose 12.3% in 72 hours to $665 driven by Polkadot-linked developer activity and new subnet proposals for inference markets, according to CoinMarketCap. Fetch.ai (FET) increased 10% WoW to a market cap of $1.4 billion, supported by the AI agent narrative and integration with Bosch-led “AIoT” consortium, per Fetch.ai’s news.
3. The total market cap of the AI tokens basket (RNDR, FET, TAO, AKT, OCEAN) reached $8.9 billion, an 11% WoW increase, outperforming the overall crypto market’s 4% growth, indicating thematic rotation into AI-compute assets as reported by CoinGecko. Render network usage hit 1.2 million GPU hours rendered year-to-date, a 22% MoM increase, suggesting expanding real-world compute demand, according to Render Foundation. Akash’s GPU lease rate remains competitive at an average of $1.25 per hour per A100 equivalent, with prices well below centralized cloud GPU rates, as per Akash Analytics. Additionally, io.net’s token incentive plan allocates 5 million IO tokens to GPU providers to incentivize supply-side growth ahead of its mainnet launch, according to io.net documentation.