The Agentic Future (03.24.26): Jensen Huang Validates Bittensor, AI Sector Hits $21B & The x402 Report Drops
Bittensor (TAO) breaks $300 after Nvidia's CEO endorses open source distributed AI on the All-In Podcast, the AI token sector surges 42% in 24 hours, and Khala Research publishes x402 report
This Crypto AI & Robotics newsletter consists of three parts:
Snippet Partner (SURF)
Crypto AI & Robotics Market Overview
Emerging Developments
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1. THE HEADLINE IS TAO: JENSEN HUANG GOES ON THE ALL-IN PODCAST
Last week we covered Covenant-72B; the 72-billion-parameter model trained entirely on Bittensor’s permissionless Subnet 3. This week the story escalated.
On March 19, Chamath Palihapitiya raised the topic of decentralized AI training directly with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the All-In Podcast.
Chamath described the distributed training run on Bittensor as “a pretty crazy technical accomplishment.”
Huang’s response carried weight: he endorsed the coexistence of proprietary and open-source AI models, stating they are:
“A and B, not A or B.”
One correction from the podcast: Chamath cited a 4-billion-parameter model.
The Opentensor Foundation and Templar clarified the model is Covenant-72B, a 72-billion-parameter LLM pre-trained permissionlessly across 70+ global contributors using standard internet hardware, achieving a 67.1 MMLU score.
Confirmed in a March 2026 arXiv paper as the largest decentralized LLM pre-training run on record.
Why this matters: Jensen Huang is the most influential executive in AI hardware. When he treats a crypto-native decentralized training run as a legitimate expression of distributed coordination rather than dismissing it, it reframes the Bittensor thesis for audiences that have historically ignored it. This was a technical validation from the person whose company supplies the chips.
TAO surged 17% on March 20, breaking above $300 as TAO maxis made some controversial statements:
The token hit an intraday high of $310.60 before cooling. Futures open interest nearly tripled from $131.9M (March 4) to $361.1M (March 17). Daily trading volume peaked at $677M. Subnet tokens rallied in tandem: Templar (SN3) gained 194% on the week, Targon rose 60%, Chutes climbed 40%.
The structural TAO-to-subnet dynamic remains in play. Under dTAO, each subnet operates with its own alpha token, purchased by staking TAO into a subnet-specific liquidity pool. Concentrated demand for any single subnet cascades into base asset accumulation.
Three concurrent catalysts are stacking:
Technical milestone. Covenant-72B is a delivered product, not a roadmap claim. A 67.1 MMLU score puts it in the same performance range as Meta’s LLaMA 2 70B
Institutional access. Grayscale’s Bittensor Trust gained SEC-reporting status on March 14. The S-1 filing to convert it into a spot ETP on NYSE Arca (ticker GTAO) is pending. xTAO continues accumulating as the largest corporate holder
Ecosystem capital. General Tensor closed $5M across oversubscribed pre-seed and seed rounds. The seed was anchored by Good Morning Holdings (Goldman Sachs-backed). DCG participated in the pre-seed. The company generates TAO at 40x the efficiency of passive accumulation. Yuma, a DCG subsidiary, published its second State of Bittensor report noting subnet tokens now represent 27% of TAO’s market cap with 120+ subnets active
Post-halving dynamics (December 2025) underpin the supply side:
Daily emissions dropped from 7,200 TAO to 3,600 TAO
Less new supply entering the market while demand catalysts compound
The Bitcoin halving playbook applied to a productive asset; with strong distribution channels to explain its value proposition:
We covered Templar as one of the five subnets in our Khala Bittensor report: Link
Further subnet breakouts continue as today, Targon partners with Intel for confidential compute:
A) DeAI Market Cap Analysis
The overall DeAI market cap has increased to $22.1B (+6.5% 24h) with $3.0B in daily trading volume:
TAO is the headline. $307.68, up 10.7% on the day and 10.1% on the week, with $648M in 24h volume (20% of all DeAI token trading volume). Bittensor has reclaimed the $300 level and is holding it.
The Jensen Huang catalyst covered above is driving sustained accumulation rather than a one-day spike. Templar (SN3) remains the top gainer in the AI sector at +180.6% on the period.
B) Robotics Market Cap Analysis
The robotics market cap has increased to $724M (+5.5% 24h) with $151.8M in trading volume:
GEOD (+2.9% 7d): $0.1409, $59.7M mcap. Thin volume ($243K 24h) but holding steady. The GEO-SWARM Kickstarter campaign and Lightspeed (Solana/Blockworks) coverage addition are improving institutional visibility
ROBO (-25.0% 7d): $0.02328, $51.9M mcap. Fabric Protocol giving back gains after the initial listing momentum. Circle partnership targeting the first machine-to-machine payment standard for physical robots using USDC via x402 remains the longer-term catalyst. Unitree Robotics approaching its IPO
IOTX (+4.7% 7d): $0.005365, $50.7M mcap. IoTeX quietly steady. The DePIN infrastructure layer for machine connectivity continues to build out its ecosystem
PEAQ (+31.0% 24h): $0.01853, $35.9M mcap. The standout mover today. peaq’s robotics narrative video and Robotics SDK (ROS 2 compatible) from prior weeks continue to attract capital.
Hashkey Capital’s Machine Economy research report highlighted peaq as a foundational L1 for machine identity, payments, and governance. There’s a clear focus on the Korean market also:
2. x402: The Khala Research Report Is Live
Rather than repeating the weekly Artemis breakdowns, this week we published the definitive x402 ecosystem report through Khala Research:
Our report covers:
The full protocol mechanics and how x402 operationalizes HTTP 402 for autonomous stablecoin-based payments
The agentic stack: x402 (payments), ERC-8004 (agent identity), ERC-8183 (agent commerce), ERC-8126 (agent verification)
Detailed ecosystem coverage of material participants:
The facilitator leaderboard: Coinbase at 58.7% of all-time $ volume; Virtuals now dominant on 30-day $ volume at $2.3M of $3.5M ecosystem total (65% share)
The asymmetry: Visa and Stripe process $14T and $1.9T respectively. The aggregate x402 ecosystem market cap for tokens with genuine protocol connection is under $700M
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Key data points from the report:
~165M cumulative x402 transactions
~$46.5M in cumulative volume
~95% of 2025 volume was memecoin-driven (per Visa’s Cuy Sheffield)
But Galaxy Research data shows gamed transactions falling below 50% since early December
Real enterprise utility is nascent but the institutional coalition (Coinbase, Cloudflare, Google, Visa, Stripe, PayPal) is without precedent
If you want the full picture, the report is here: Link
3. AI Agents Developments: Innovations and Market Developments
Here is what happened on crypto AI & robotics related developments this week:
That’s a wrap for issue 169 of Sammy’s Snippets. I hope you enjoyed it.
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Disclaimer: The content covered in this newsletter is not to be considered investment or financial advice. It is for informational and educational purposes only.
Disclosure: I hold some of the assets and have partnerships with some of the projects mentioned in this newsletter.