• Musk’s announcement of a 25% stake in xAI for X Corp shareholders, along with Grok chatbot testing, sparks AI token surge.
• The AI tokens are also responding to the ouster of Sam Altman from OpenAI.
• Altman is now headed to Microsoft.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)-focused tokens experienced a significant boost over the weekend, propelled by key developments in the AI sector.

Traders exhibited strong confidence in the long-term growth potential of these tokens, triggered by notable announcements from industry leaders.

Elon Musk’s revelation sparks euphoria

Technology entrepreneur Elon Musk announced that shareholders of X Corp, a conglomerate holding a diverse range of companies, would hold a substantial 25% stake in the newly unveiled AI venture, xAI.

The excitement surrounding this revelation was amplified as xAI initiated testing for its Grok chatbot, leading to the creation of numerous replica tokens.

Sam Altman’s ouster from OpenAI

In a separate development, there were reports that circulated at the beginning of the weekend about the possible return of Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI (developer of ChatGPT), to the company’s board. These reports caused AI cryptocurrencies to surge.

The AI coins have remained bullish even after confirmation that Altman was headed for Microsoft to lead AI research and will not be coming back to OpenAI. His position at OpenAI has been given to Emmett Shear, the ex-CEO and cofounder of Twitch.

Today I got a call inviting me to consider a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: to become the interim CEO of @OpenAI. After consulting with my family and reflecting on it for just a few hours, I accepted. I had recently resigned from my role as CEO of Twitch due to the birth of my…

— Emmett Shear (@eshear) November 20, 2023

AI token market witnesses substantial gains

The AI crypto market responded positively to the above developments, with notable performances across various tokens.

Bittensor’s TAO recorded a 7.7% increase on Monday, adding to a remarkable 83% rally over the past week.

Render’s RNDR, Ocean Protocol’s OCEAN, Fetch AI’s FET, and SingularityNet’s AGIX are also bullish and have outperformed major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. However, smaller AI cryptocurrencies like Synesis One (SNS), LimeWire (LMWR), and nuco.cloud (NCDT) are leading the AI token bull run with 97%, 56%, and 35% price surges respectively.

The broader AI token market cap witnessed an impressive 10% surge on Monday compared to the 1.7% increase in the global cryptocurrency market cap

The recent surge in AI tokens demonstrates the growing prominence of the sector, akin to the impact of gaming applications and decentralized finance (DeFi) tokens in previous market cycles. But, while uncertainties persist, the resilience of AI tokens in the face of corporate developments indicates sustained market interest in the potential of artificial intelligence technologies.