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Animoca Brands is making a bold bet that the next wave of blockchain users won’t be human at all. The Hong Kong-based company, which oversees a portfolio of over 600 AI and blockchain-related companies, is building infrastructure for what its co-founder Yat Siu calls the “agentic economy,” a future where autonomous AI agents become the dominant participants in on-chain financial systems.
The Animoca Minds play
The centerpiece of this strategy is Animoca Minds, a platform launched on February 5, 2026, in partnership with Ethoswarm and CryptoSlam. The idea is straightforward: let non-technical users deploy autonomous AI agents that come pre-equipped with blockchain functionalities. These agents handle digital identities and facilitate transactions on their own, bypassing the friction of traditional financial plumbing.
To accelerate development on the platform, Animoca initiated the Minds Investment Programme in May 2026 with up to $10 million earmarked for developers building on the Minds ecosystem.
The company also invested $1 million in Superior.Trade on May 28, 2026, specifically to enhance AI agent trading capabilities.
Why blockchain, not banks
Siu’s projections are eye-catching: he forecasts the emergence of 50 to 200 billion AI agents by 2031, each needing on-chain wallets and the ability to transact. For context, there are roughly 8 billion humans on the planet. If even the low end of that estimate materializes, AI agents would outnumber people on blockchain networks by a factor of six.
Building the rails for machine commerce
Around June 2026, Animoca collaborated with AllScale to enable stablecoin payments tailored specifically for agentic commerce.
Siu has also emphasized the role of what he calls “AI fleets,” coordinated groups of agents driving commerce across both metaverse environments and real-world transactions.
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