Animoca Brands Launches $10M Initiative to Fund AI Agent Development on Blockchain

MIAMI — Animoca Brands announced a $10 million investment initiative for developers building AI agent applications through its Animoca Minds platform on Wednesday. Yat Siu, chairman of Animoca Brands, outlined his vision in a keynote speech at Consensus 2026 in Miami on May 7, 2026.

He said the metaverse is evolving beyond immersive digital worlds, with AI agents increasingly handling commerce, payments and coordination through blockchain infrastructure in the background.

Siu predicted tens of billions of autonomous AI agents will handle bookings, payments, and online transactions in the background using blockchain as their financial and identity infrastructure. He said this “agent economy” could solve crypto’s user-onboarding problem. The metaverse may be coming to us rather than being a place that humans go to, Siu said.

Consumers could eventually rely on dozens or even hundreds of AI agents to coordinate their digital activities. “I think the point is that it’s going to be more agents than humans,” Siu said. ” An estimated 700 million to 800 million people globally now own some form of cryptocurrency.

Fewer than 70 million actively use blockchain applications. “My mom’s not going to be using MetaMask. It’s hard for her,” Siu said. “Blockchain technology is the ideal financial system for machines. We, the humans, were the guinea pigs,” Siu said.

CoinDesk reported that Siu argued the crypto industry may have misunderstood the metaverse. The next phase of virtual economies would arrive not through VR headsets or immersive digital worlds, but through fleets of AI agents transacting across blockchain networks behind the scenes.