Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) may have stalled out in the $60,000 to $65,000 range, but crypto investors can still find opportunities. Some newer crypto tokens with artificial intelligence (AI) connections are still buoyant, and some of them are up more than 132% for the year.

A big reason for that has been the enormous enthusiasm around the artificial intelligence investment thesis. In the same way that equity investors have embraced Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA), crypto investors are now embracing new crypto tokens they think could benefit the most from AI. With that in mind, here's a closer look at three of the most popular AI crypto tokens that have been seeing the biggest boosts lately.

Render

Arguably, the most popular AI crypto token is Render (CRYPTO: RNDR) -- it's up 132% for the year. With a total market cap of $4.5 billion, Render now ranks as a top 25 cryptocurrency. Given its recent ascent, some investors now refer to Render as "the Nvidia of crypto." As you might have guessed from the name, Render offers GPU-based rendering solutions for studios, artists, and creators.

But that's not why crypto investors are so excited about Render. The thinking now is that the same decentralized GPU computing power used for rendering can also be used for AI. If you want to train a large language model (LLM), for example, you will need a lot of "GPU compute," which is the raw computing power required for modern AI solutions.

So it's easy to see why Render's performance is starting to look a lot like Nvidia's (which has become nearly synonymous with all things AI). Nvidia is the ultimate source of all that GPU-based computing power, whether it's used for rendering or AI.

Fetch.ai

Fetch.ai (CRYPTO: FET) is up a staggering 208% for the year and now ranks as a top 50 crypto by market cap. Fetch.ai is building what it refers to as an "open, permissionless, decentralized machine learning network with a crypto economy." That's a mouthful, but it just means that Fetch.ai is a new platform for AI products and services. That includes large data sets for training LLMs and sophisticated AI bots known as agents.

The way that you pay for these AI products and services is with the Fetch.ai token. You can think of Fetch.ai as a digital currency for the emerging AI economy. Thus, the greater the demand for all things AI, the greater the demand for the Fetch.ai token.

While there is obviously some demand for AI on a consumer level (who hasn't played around with AI chatbots?), the real demand will come from companies looking to undergo AI transformations. That's where Nvidia comes into the picture because these companies are often using Nvidia's products for new AI-related projects.

According to Fetch.ai, the highest growth opportunities are in sectors such as logistics, transportation, and smart energy grids. As proof of its growing industry focus, Fetch.ai recently partnered with German companies Bosch and Deutsche Telekom on an AI platform.

Since 2017, Bosch has partnered with Nvidia on AI-powered self-driving cars, so that could be just one example of an area where Fetch.ai gets a huge boost. In the past, Deutsche Telekom has partnered with Nvidia on "smart city" concepts, so that might be another area.

SingularityNET

Finally, there's SingularityNET (CRYPTO: AGIX), which is up an eye-popping 193% for the year. It now ranks as a top 75 cryptocurrency, with a $1.2 billion market cap. However, since it's not available for trading on popular cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase Global (NASDAQ: COIN), it may not be suitable for all crypto investors.

In terms of overall AI strategy, SingularityNET is hitting it out of the park. It is pushing forward the idea of artificial general intelligence (AGI), which is leaps and bounds ahead of the current version of AI, known as generative AI (best known as the variety that includes ChatGPT).

In fact, according to futurists like Ray Kurzweil (now at Google), AGI implies a future in which a single computer will be smarter than all humans combined. It will have access to all human knowledge ever created and, as a result, will be able to create truly innovative solutions. To power that level of AI, it will probably require a lot of Nvidia GPUs.

What's next for AI crypto tokens?

As long as Nvidia's stock performance continues to impress, it's safe to say that investors will be on the lookout for crypto tokens most likely to benefit from the enthusiasm around AI. For investors who think that Nvidia is the one AI stock they need to own, then it also makes sense to focus on AI crypto tokens with indirect or direct ties to Nvidia.

However, just keep in mind that AI is still a relatively new industry, and trends can come and go. Plenty of companies claim to be "the next Nvidia," so it's likely the AI investment thesis will change and evolve over time. For now, though, the three crypto tokens highlighted above appear to be doing the best job of benefiting from the new enthusiasm around AI.

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Dominic Basulto has positions in Bitcoin and Fetch. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bitcoin, Coinbase Global, Fetch, Nvidia, and Render Token. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Thanks, Nvidia: These 3 AI Crypto Tokens Are Up 132% or More This Year was originally published by The Motley Fool