The Agentic Future: AI Agent Weekly Analysis (8.12.25)

The DeAI market cap jumps $3bn (+10%) as the global AI race heats up; power, GPUs & open models at the centre, with tariffs and VC funding ramping up for AI related protocols.

Aug 12, 2025

I’ll use a decade of traditional finance/corporate experience to refine the chaos into bite-sized chunks for you to digest

This newsletter consists of three parts:

Snippet Partner (Momentum — MMT Finance)
Market Overview
Emerging Developments

Enjoy the journey and if you have any questions feel free to reach out to me on X

Momentum (MMT) is building the core trading layer of the Sui ecosystem, aiming to become the go-to hub for stablecoin and ‘BTCFi’ trading.

With more than $150mm in TVL and partnerships across the biggest protocols on Sui, it’s positioned to drive serious on-chain volume.

Momentum uses a ve(3,3) model; a system where users lock tokens to gain voting power, influence rewards, and earn a share of trading fees.

This creates long-term alignment between users, protocols, and liquidity; not just short-term speculation.

(Data Source: Defi Llama)

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AI mindshare is on the rise again as it approaches 29% (+2% on the week):

$3bn (+10%) has been added to the overall AI market cap this week:

Key Theme: Global AI Race

As AI development ramps up, we’re seeing Nation States apply economic levers to critical AI infrastructure.

To enhance these models there are several key bottlenecks to alleviate:

Power (Electricity)
Compute (GPUs / H20 Chips), and;
Data + Algorithm Refinement

A global race to accumulate these resources is ramping up.

1. Power:

Electricity is a huge component to scaling AI training:

China has been investing in this infrastructure for years to alleviate this bottleneck:

The current administration has been ramping up efforts to prevent brain drain, and to bring more AI infrastructure investment to U.S. soil.

Take the $500bn Stargate initiative announced earlier this year.

But has China developed too much of a head start with its power generation?

Unlikely. Despite the Deepseek breakthrough earlier this year, the requirement for AI compute is only going to ramp up.

2. Compute: H20 Chips

This week alone, Trump imposed 15% corporate specific tariffs on NVIDIA + AMD for its H20 chips that are being sold to China:

This is only likely to continue as resources become even more scarce to develop the most disruptive technology of our generation.

3. Data + Algorithm Refinement

Nathan Lambert highlights that open sourced models need to be front of mind:

“America needs to take open models more seriously. This summer the early lead in open model adoption of the US via Llama has been overtaken by Chinese models.”

What’s the impact?

A continuation of technological transformation.

Expect this chart to replicate with incumbent tech just as cars did in replacing horses.

As our world submerges deeper into the digital realm, AI will be able to replicate software at an exponential rate, particularly as their coding capabilities improve.

It’s no wonder funding levels for AI ventures account for a third of VC investments:

Weekly Crypto AI Agent Price Analysis

a) Nansen Capital Flows:

Nansen’s terminal provides great analysis on net capital flows.

AI Token capital flows are led by Fartcoin, despite a 14% decline. But there are several utility focused tokens with strong net inflows too:

Inspect is a blast from the past here: The token is up 49% and seen $300k of net inflows on the back of deeper Bittensor (TAO) alignment, and new mgmt.
It essentially had the Kaito/Cookie vision before InfoFi became a thing. Who remembers the OG NFT PFP rankings?
Subnet 23 (NuanceSubnet) is described as the "Incentive layer for global discourse". S23 turns X engagement into $TAO mining essentially becoming yield.

b) Cookie Mindshare Analysis

Currently, there are 1,969 (NICE) AI Agents recorded on Cookie totalling $12.2bn:

This is an increase of 60 agents and an increase of $2bn (20%) market cap:

Attention has consolidated into the same projects as last week, for similar reasons.

For the daily analysis you can refer direct to my X account where I break down market developments as they emerge.

Here are some other interesting Crypto AI related developments this week — Link

News included in the above:

I’ll round out this letter with Balaji’s top tips on not being caught on the left side of the bell curve:

Additional Reading:

0xJeff — Feedback from testing 20 Web3 AI protocols: Link
0xPrismatic — Inside Agent Commerce Protocol, where AI Agents coordinate, pay, and compete: Link
Thiccyth0t — State of the machine: Link

That’s a wrap for issue 137 of S4mmy’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.

I hold some of the assets and have partnerships with some of the projects mentioned in this newsletter.

0xSammy: Decentralized AI, Robotics & Autonomous Systems

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