Technology

Story: Animoca Brands Bets $10M on Agentic AI as $900B Ad Industry Faces Disruption

By Maheen Hernandez

1 / 15

The $900 Billion Problem Nobody's Solved Yet. Here's where it gets uncomfortable for a lot of people in traditional media and marketing.

2 / 15

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.

3 / 15

What Siu Told Retail Investors. Siu's message to individual investors was pretty direct: diversify now, build wide baskets, don't…

4 / 15

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…

5 / 15

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.

6 / 15

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…

7 / 15

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.

8 / 15

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…

9 / 15

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.

10 / 15

Related: Texas Man Faces SEC Charges Over $12.3M Fake AI Trading Bot Scam

11 / 15

What's clear is that Animoca sees agentic AI as central to staying competitive, not just as a side experiment.

12 / 15

And there's a broader strategic logic here too. Animoca has always positioned itself at the intersection of emerging tech and digital ownership.

13 / 15

His comparison to blockchain is probably the most telling thing he said in Miami. Blockchain promised to decentralize trust and ownership.

14 / 15

More context: Roman Storm Says DOJ Used Debanking to Gut His Tornado Cash Defense

15 / 15

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.

The Currency Analytics

Want the full story?