Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have pledged $50 million toward expanding the Aptos ecosystem, with a strong emphasis on AI agent infrastructure and research. The investment will also support two products launched over the past year to address growing demand for onchain AI agent activity.
Among those initiatives are Decibel, an AI-powered onchain order book and perpetuals exchange that went live on the Aptos mainnet in February, and Shelby, a decentralized storage protocol designed to handle the data and operational demands of AI agents, the Aptos Foundation announced Thursday.
“Autonomous agents are already transacting onchain at frequencies no human can match, routing to whatever venue is fastest, most consistent, and least gameable,” the foundation said.
Aptos is joining a broader wave of crypto projects exploring opportunities in the emerging agentic AI economy. According to the foundation, the sector requires infrastructure capable of delivering sub-second transaction finality and systems that can operate continuously without human intervention.
AI agents are increasingly being positioned as digital assistants capable of handling tasks for users in both personal and professional settings, including booking flights, making online purchases, and executing sophisticated onchain trades autonomously.
Last month, Brian Armstrong predicted that “more AI agents will be transacting online than humans very soon,” echoing earlier remarks from Jeremy Allaire, who said in January that “literally billions of AI agents” could be conducting onchain transactions within three to five years.
The World Economic Forum has also forecast rapid growth, estimating in January that AI agents could expand into a $236 billion market by 2034—up from $5.4 billion in 2024, a 43-fold increase.
AI agents are increasingly using blue-chip stablecoins for transactions. On Wednesday, Amazon Web Services said it integrated Coinbase’s x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, enabling AI agents to make USDC (USDC) payments and access services through AWS-managed controls.
A week earlier, crypto wallet startup Oobit launched a Visa-supported virtual card allowing AI agents to make online purchases using USDt (Tether (USDT)) on behalf of businesses.
The Aptos Foundation said the Aptos (APT) token will play a central role in its AI agent ecosystem, including being burned in transactions, required for access to advanced agent features, and staked to enhance performance.
The $50 million commitment will also fund broader development of the “Aptos stack,” including integrations with neobanks, institutional platforms, and wallet providers. The team also plans to explore encrypted mempools and confidential perpetual trading tools.
Separately, Aptos introduced a privacy-focused token, Confidential APT, on mainnet on April 24 to address the trade-off between transparency and user privacy. Aptos Labs engineer Sherry Xiao said it could enable use cases like private payrolls, treasury operations, settlement flows, and trading strategies that would otherwise be visible onchain.
