Investors who want exposure to AI beyond the big public names have few ways in. Bittensor offers one. It is a blockchain network, powered by the TAO token, where 128 independent projects call
Investors who want exposure to AI beyond the big public names have few ways in. Bittensor offers one. It is a blockchain network, powered by the TAO token, where 128 independent projects called subnets each take on a specific AI task and issue their own token. The hard part has been getting in.
Two leaders in the ecosystem told TheStreet Roundtable how they are opening the door.
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Sam Pierre is a tech partner at Crucible, which incubates new subnets and builds one of the ecosystem's wallets. He earned the role by building an AI tool that evaluated every subnet on the network, work that brought him to the firm two years ago.
He explains Bittensor simply. Investors buy TAO, the central currency, on an exchange such as Kraken. They can then swap it for the token of any subnet they believe in, such as a project building a shopping agent.
Crucible's wallet, available as a Chrome extension and on iOS and Android, is designed so users do not have to understand "all of the intricacies of Bittensor in order to use" it. It shows profit and loss on each token and groups projects by theme, such as AI agents and compute.
"My 95 year old grandmother uses our wallet," Pierre said. "I'm not sure she understands everything to do with TAO, but she understands how to swap."
The app is live on Apple's App Store in the U.S. and Canada, with more countries planned. Pierre is candid that subnet tokens add volatility on top of an already volatile asset.
Evan Malanga has spent nearly 10 years in crypto, six of them inside Digital Currency Group. He is chief revenue officer of Yuma, the DCG subsidiary built around Bittensor, which has grown to more than 30 people since launching at the end of 2024.
Yuma touches every role in the network. It runs a validator that partners with wallets, custodians and exchanges, an accelerator backing about a dozen subnets, a proprietary mining team and an asset management business. It has also partnered with the University of Connecticut.
Malanga's thesis starts with access.
"To access the world of investing in AI is actually pretty limited," he said. The private leaders are open mainly to investors in the largest venture funds, and in the public names, he argues, "largely the asymmetric upside has been missed."
Yuma's answer is rules based products modeled on familiar index funds. One holds 80% TAO and 20% spread across all 128 subnets, weighted by market cap. "You don't really need to think about it," he said.
Interest so far comes from family offices, individuals and digital asset treasury companies. The largest traditional asset managers, he said, are still a while away.
Together, the two are building the entry points a new asset class needs. Crucible makes buying and tracking subnet tokens simple enough for everyday investors, and Yuma packages the whole network for those who want broad exposure. Both are betting that easier access is what brings the next wave of capital into decentralized AI.
