Key Takeaways
After spending much of the previous two years as one of the biggest buzz categories in the crypto market, artificial intelligence (AI) cryptocurrencies experienced something of a downturn in January 2025 as China’s DeepSeek put the cat among the pigeons.
However, there were still some success stories inside the top 400 cryptos, so let’s take a look at three of last month’s most notable climbers.
Freysa AI , a crypto that fits into both the memecoin and the AI sectors, was, by quite some margin, the best-performing artificial intelligence-related cryptocurrency in January 2025.
The platform describes itself as “the world’s first adversarial agent game”, with competitors trying to persuade it to hand over a prize pool.
Having come onto the open market in December, FAI blossomed in January. The BASE-based token entered the top 300 cryptos by market cap, shooting up nearly 60% from $0.03282 to $0.05235 by Jan. 31.
When it came to the bigger players in crypto’s AI sector, Bittensor’s TAO coin was pretty much the only cryptocurrency linked to artificial intelligence in the top 100 to grow in January. Boosted by positive social media discussions, it could hold its own.
On January 31 2025, TAO, which first came onto the open market in March 2023, was worth about $460.35, up by more than 4.6% from $440.03 at the start of the year.
ZIG got some attention when what had been known as Zignaly rebranded to ZIGChain in December last year following the launch of its long-awaited mainnet .
The native token of a platform that first came out in 2018, ZIG entered the world of AI when Oroswap , which styles itself as the first AI-enabled decentralized exchange (DEX), launched on ZIGChain this month.
Although there hasn’t been much change in ZIG’s price, its move from $0.1131 to $0.118 over the course of January meant it had risen nearly 4.35%, putting it into the top 400 cryptocurrencies by market cap.