Smart Tech Revolution: How Blockchain and AI are Reshaping Investment
Two digital revolutions, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI), are converging, creating smarter ways to manage assets from crypto to private equity. This merging of two revolutionary technologies is reshaping the foundations of investing, accelerating decentralization, improving risk management and opening new markets.
Recent macro movements highlight the urgency of these shifts. Although the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:INX) recovered to record highs following an April plunge, its performance pales in comparison to Bitcoin’s gains. In Bitcoin terms, the S&P has lost 15 percent year-to-date and a staggering 99.98 percent since 2012, according to The Kobeissi Letter.
Meanwhile, stablecoins have become lifelines for emerging markets, crossing US$160 billion in market cap in June, up from US$150 billion weeks prior.
At the same time, decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are capturing more market share, with Q2 2025 seeing a 25 percent spike in DEX volumes compared to a 28 percent drop in centralized exchanges (CEX) trading, per CoinGecko.
Finally, AI-powered strategies are increasingly used in managing crypto treasuries and executing DeFi trades.
Together, these shifts reflect a shift in investor priorities toward finding agility, yield and transparency in smart tech. As these trends accelerate, their practical implications are reshaping investment across diverse domains.
Financing infrastructure
New infrastructure is needed to power the next wave of AI innovation, and blockchain is providing new ways to finance it.
“What’s unfolding right now with AI in the U.S. is a full-blown industrial revolution, and it’s being backed and subsidized by the federal government like few things I’ve seen before,” Hive Digital Technologies (TSXV:HIVE,NASDAQ:HIVE) told the Investing News Network (INN) in an email.
High-performance GPUs are the backbone of AI innovation, but they are scarce and expensive. For many investors, the only way to tap into the price action of this high-demand infrastructure is through stocks.
Companies like Compute Labs tackle this by tokenizing illiquid assets like GPUs via blockchain, offering direct access and ownership of the underlying hardware. The company anticipates managing over a billion dollars in assets within the next few years, all dedicated to owning and managing compute hardware that facilitates AI and other workflows.
For AI developers, its model means access without having to give up equity or ownership in their company. For investors, it’s a new way to gain exposure to digital infrastructure without owning stock.
“We are not working with developers (the) same way that (a cloud) provider would,” Compute Labs co-founder Nikolay Filichkin told INN. “We give them the capital, or we give them the hardware they need to grow their businesses. That way, when a developer is working with a cloud service provider, they’re working with one of our partners. So you…
