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While most of crypto had a perfectly decent September, one corner of the market was busy making everyone else look slow. Grayscale’s Artificial Intelligence crypto sector returned 54% for the month, more than doubling the 24% gain posted by the broader crypto market under Grayscale’s own six-sector framework.
The numbers come from a Grayscale research note published October 2, authored by head of research Zach Pandl. The firm tracks crypto through a proprietary taxonomy that segments the market into six distinct categories, and the AI sector sat at the top of the leaderboard for September by a considerable margin.
What drove the rally
Pandl attributed the sector’s momentum to early investor recognition of blockchains as foundational infrastructure for the emerging agent economy. The use cases he pointed to: payments, identity, private computation, and verifiable records.
The tokens that delivered that 54% aggregate return were not all pulling equal weight. NEAR topped the leaderboard with a 183% gain for the month. VVV climbed 70%, and WLD added 47%. TAO, another token in Grayscale’s Decentralized AI Fund alongside NEAR, RENDER, and FIL, rounded out the notable performers at 37%.
A single-day spike on September 22 also contributed to the narrative, with AI tokens posting a roughly 9.7% gain in one session, according to Grayscale’s report.
Still the smallest room in the house
Here is the part that makes the September performance both impressive and worth contextualizing: the AI sector, even after a 54% monthly gain, still holds the smallest market capitalization of any sector in Grayscale’s framework. The post-rally valuation sits at approximately $15 billion.
Grayscale’s strategic pivot toward AI infrastructure
Grayscale has not just been reporting on AI crypto; it has been repositioning around it. The firm launched its Decentralized AI Fund in 2024, a product built around tokens with direct exposure to the AI-blockchain convergence thesis. That fund holds NEAR, TAO, RENDER, and FIL, and was rebalanced in early August 2026.
The more pointed move came on September 22, when Grayscale rebranded its Bitcoin Miners ETF as the Grayscale AI Compute ETF, trading under the ticker GCPU. The fund now tracks the Indxx High Performance Computing Index, shifting its focus from Bitcoin mining equities to high-performance computing equities and futures more broadly.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Vivian Nguyen. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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