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Animoca Brands co-founder Yat Siu wants in on agentic AI. Big. The company just committed $10 million to an investment program targeting autonomous AI systems, and Siu made the announcement in Miami, framing the move as one of the most important pivots the firm has made.
Siu’s pitch wasn’t subtle. He put agentic AI — systems that can act and make decisions on their own, without constant human input — on the same level as blockchain. That’s a bold comparison coming from someone who built a career betting on decentralized tech. His argument: the productivity gains from agentic AI could hit something like a 1,000-fold increase. He didn’t hedge that number much. And he told retail investors directly to start building wider, more diversified portfolios to catch the wave before it breaks.
Not a small ask.
The $900 Billion Problem Nobody’s Solved Yet
Here’s where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people in traditional media and marketing. Siu warned that AI-driven discovery mechanisms could basically gut the global advertising industry — a sector worth roughly $900 billion. The logic isn’t complicated: if AI starts routing consumers to products and services directly, bypassing search ads, banner campaigns, and algorithm-driven feeds, the whole economic engine behind digital advertising starts to sputter.
The timeline for that collapse? Unclear. Siu didn’t give a hard date, and probably nobody can. But his tone in Miami wasn’t “maybe someday.” It was more like “start preparing now.” Companies built entirely around ad revenue — and there are a lot of them — would face serious structural pressure if AI discovery keeps eating into click-through models. The shift, he said, is already underway.
It’s worth remembering how slowly, then suddenly, these things tend to move. The advertising industry has absorbed shocks before — cable, social media, programmatic buying — and each time it adapted, eventually. But agentic AI seems different in kind, not just degree. It’s not a new ad channel. It’s potentially a replacement for the whole discovery layer that advertising depends on.
Animoca’s Bet and What It Doesn’t Tell Us Yet
The $10 million commitment is real, but a lot of the specifics aren’t public. Animoca hasn’t named the projects it’s backing or the partners it’s working with. No breakdown of how the funds get allocated. No timeline on announcements. Observers are basically waiting, which is a little frustrating given how big the claims are.
What’s clear is that Animoca sees agentic AI as central to staying competitive, not just as a side experiment. Siu’s framing puts it at the core of how digital ecosystems will work going forward — how businesses interact with customers, how data gets processed, how decisions get automated. He’s not treating this as a hedge. It reads more like a conviction bet.
And there’s a broader strategic logic here too. Animoca has always positioned itself at the intersection of emerging tech and digital ownership. Blockchain, NFTs, gaming, Web3 infrastructure — the firm has consistently moved toward whatever looks like the next layer of the internet. AI, in Siu’s view, is that next layer. Maybe the biggest one yet.
His comparison to blockchain is probably the most telling thing he said in Miami. Blockchain promised to decentralize trust and ownership. Agentic AI, he seems to think, will decentralize decision-making and productivity itself. Whether that plays out the way he expects — who knows. But the parallel he’s drawing is serious, not just marketing.
What Siu Told Retail Investors
Siu’s message to individual investors was pretty direct: diversify now, build wide baskets, don’t wait for the dust to settle. The implication being that by the time the AI transition is obvious to everyone, the early positions will already be taken. It’s the same argument early crypto advocates made around 2017 and 2018, for better or worse.
He sees AI integration into everyday internet use as something that’ll change the basic mechanics of how businesses reach customers. More personalized. More automated. More efficient, in theory. Companies that move slowly — his words, more or less — could find themselves locked out of new competitive dynamics they didn’t see coming.
The honest answer is that the specific applications Animoca plans to fund still aren’t disclosed. There’s no project list, no named partners, no public roadmap. The $10 million is committed, the direction is agentic AI, and the rest is pending. Further details are expected but haven’t arrived yet.
Siu’s enthusiasm for the space is clear. Whether Animoca’s $10 million ends up being a prescient early move or an expensive lesson in hype cycles — that’s the question the industry will be watching. For now, the firm’s bet is on the table, the ad industry is on notice, and the specifics remain forthcoming.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Animoca Brands investing $10 million in?
Animoca Brands launched a $10 million investment program focused on agentic artificial intelligence, which refers to AI systems capable of acting and making decisions autonomously.
Why does Yat Siu think the advertising industry is at risk?
Siu warned that AI-driven discovery mechanisms could disrupt how consumers find products and services, potentially undermining the conventional ad revenue models that support the roughly $900 billion global advertising industry.
