Aptos allocated $50M toward AI agent infrastructure, including trading, storage and confidential transaction systems.
The Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs have allocated $50 million toward Aptos network development, with a primary focus on infrastructure and research for AI agents. The announcement was published Thursday on the Aptos Network blog.
The funding targets two products that the ecosystem shipped last year. Decibel, an AI-powered on-chain order book and perpetuals exchange, launched on Aptos mainnet in February. Shelby, a decentralized storage protocol designed to handle AI agent workloads, is also part of the investment scope.
The foundation said autonomous agents are already executing on-chain transactions at speeds no human can replicate, and that the infrastructure must support sub-second finality and operate continuously without human oversight. Aptos (APT) will be used for transaction burns, access to advanced AI-agent features, and staking mechanisms aimed at improving network performance.
The $50 million will also go toward integrations with neobanks, institutional platforms, and wallet providers, as well as development of encrypted mempools and confidential perpetuals trading. Aptos is among a growing number of crypto projects building payment, storage, and trading infrastructure specifically for AI agent activity.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong projected last month that AI agents would outnumber humans transacting online "very soon." Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said in January that billions of AI agents would be transacting on-chain within three to five years. The World Economic Forum projected in January that the AI agent market could reach $236 billion by 2034, up from $5.4 billion in 2024.
Amazon Web Services announced on Wednesday that it had integrated Coinbase's x402 payments protocol into Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, allowing AI agents to make USDC payments via AWS-managed controls. Crypto wallet startup Oobit, backed by Tether, launched a Visa-supported virtual card the week prior, enabling AI agents to spend USDT on behalf of businesses.
Aptos also rolled out Confidential APT on its mainnet on April 24, a privacy-focused token designed to conceal balances and transfer amounts. Aptos Labs founding engineer Sherry Xiao told Cointelegraph the feature could help businesses protect on-chain salary payments, treasury movements, and trading strategies from public visibility.
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