Fundstrat: AI is the Main Reason for Slowdown in Crypto Company IPOs
Fundstrat strategist Sean Farrell pointed out that the core driver behind the significant slowdown in crypto company IPOs is just two letters: AI.
AI has attracted a large amount of traditional venture capital and institutional funds, leading to a significant narrowing of the financing and listing window for crypto projects.
Crypto startups and investors in the market are facing pressure from IPO delays. Fundstrat's public analysis indicates that funds are flowing towards AI infrastructure and application companies, benefiting from this trend, while pure crypto projects are under short-term pressure, with capital accelerating its shift from crypto to the AI sector.
Source: Public Information
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Sean Farrell, as the head of crypto strategy at Fundstrat, has previously pinpointed capital rotations accurately during market cycles. This time, he directly identifies AI as the main reason for the slowdown in crypto IPOs, continuing his observation of cross-sector capital competition. He has previously warned that AI will become the largest competitor for crypto funding in 2025-2026.
In terms of capital flow, traditional VCs and institutions are shifting hundreds of billions of dollars from crypto to AI computing power, data centers, and application layers. Crypto companies, facing declining valuation attractiveness, are forced to delay IPOs or turn to private placements, motivated by the pursuit of higher certainty returns and faster exit paths in AI, resulting in a significant reallocation of capital from speculative crypto to long-term AI infrastructure.
Similar to how the NFT/metaverse craze in 2021-2022 siphoned off crypto funds, and how blockchain projects were squeezed by cloud computing after the ICO bubble in 2017-2018, Fundstrat currently places the crypto industry in a painful transformation phase, competing fiercely for attention and capital with AI.
Structural judgment: Essentially, this is about capital concentration. AI offers higher expected returns and clearer exit paths, causing limited institutions and venture capital to concentrate heavily on a few high-certainty sectors. The mechanism is that under resource scarcity, capital always chases the fields with the highest marginal efficiency, forcing crypto project valuations to reset and accelerating the industry's shift from narrative-driven to real build projects.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
Capital chases certainty; low certainty leads to losses.
The more AI sucks capital, the longer the crypto winter.
Hot sectors rotate quickly; old sectors cool off first.