Explaining the changing trends of the emerging Agent: AI companions and robots have enormous potential

Compiled by Felix,

The strong overall narrative of 2025 is collective wisdom narrative. With the rapid development of individual agents and the leadership of ecosystems such as Virtuals, Story, and ai16z, this transformation seems inevitable.

TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) is another key pillar of the completely autonomous AI agent. Projects such as Phala Network and founder Marvin Tong are leading this trend and conducting experiments such as the ‘Unruggable ICO’ in cooperation with Skely (founder of aiPool). Investors use TEE to send funds to the agent, and the agent securely calculates the number of ICO tokens to be allocated based on the received funds.

Related Readings: Phala Network’s AI Experiment with ai16z: AI Self-Replication and Pre-Sale, aiPool and Spore.fun Drive New Gameplay

While receiving positive feedback, concerns still exist. Just like Freysa (a sci-fi AI character) in the ACT game, agents can still be tricked into releasing funds. This indicates the need for continuous strengthening of verification mechanisms.

However, early experiments are still very promising. For example, the first token launched by aiPool (TEE proxy) soared to a market value of 70-80 million US dollars after its release.

Another prominent experiment is SPORE, in which agents ‘give birth’ to new agents. Similar to human evolution, weaker genes die off while stronger ones produce better offspring. Their first-generation agents Adam and Eve have already reached a market value of over $1 million, and the next generation will be born in 14 hours.

AI Trends in Agent Changes

The current market focus has shifted from individual agents unless they have distinct personalities or alpha generation capabilities. The market focus is shifting towards autonomous agent experiments, and this trend may accelerate with the launch of decentralized artificial intelligence infrastructure (DeAI) in the first/second quarter of 2025.

Looking forward to more creative experiments and the opportunity to invest in these experiments.

Although the current experiment has received enthusiastic feedback, two large narratives with significant TAM (Total Addressable Market) have not been fully explored:

NSFW Agents / AI Companion

Due to the increasing sense of loneliness and the demand for AI companions capable of meaningful interaction, the TAM for NSFW Agents / AI Companions category exceeds 1 trillion dollars.

（Note: NSFW stands for Not safe for work, which means content that is not suitable for browsing during work hours）

Header items in this category:

• AI Waifu: Anime waifu agent utilizing Virtuals Protocol infrastructure
• Nectar AI: Real NSFW AI Dream GF, providing SaaS model
• Lush: NSFW AI Internet celebrity, with a flagship agent Jenny

The reason why Lush stands out:

• $LUSH token has been listed
• Launched Lush Exchange, the launchpad for NSFW agents
• Income models may include subscription fees, gifts, etc.

Web3 provides the ability to invest in these attractive AI influencers as ‘shares’ and create income in the future.

$LUSH may be used as a crucial utility token within the ecosystem, granting access to advanced features and essential payment methods within the ecosystem.

Lush also plans to create a creator market, allowing artists to monetize their work by generating content in their own style. This adds another source of income to the ecosystem.

Robot

The intersection of robots and Web3 is gaining increasing attention, especially after OpenAI announced its entry into the field of humanoid robots. Their goal is to use LLM to help robots interpret text and sensory data, enhancing their interaction capabilities in the real world.

The main projects in the Web3 robot field are FrodoBots and Small Autonomous Motherfucker.

Frodobots main highlights:

• Frodobots operates in over 40 cities, collecting real-world data.
• Collaborate with top researchers from leading universities to improve Visual Language Models (VLMs) and advance towards AGI.
• Interesting interactions with robots have appeared in popular videos on TikTok, attracting a lot of attention.
• Frodobots is actually a research team dedicated to robot technology. The establishment of SAM is to let people understand their work, which is to “use robots to gamify crowdsourced real-world datasets”.
• DePIN + Embedded AI + Robot Games + Committed to the Future of AGI

The team is giving SAM the ability to autonomously control robots in more than 40 cities and drive in the city, creating more popular content, which may help increase attention and token prices.

Final Thoughts

The market has been looking for unique and niche AI agency fields. The potential market for AI companions and robots is huge and is expected to become significantly attractive by early 2025.

With the launch of DeAI infrastructure and the increase of autonomous agent experiments, these narratives are expected to move from the edge category to the spotlight of the market.

For investors and builders, these areas are worth paying close attention to. Not only because of their speculative potential, but also because in the next stage of this rapidly developing ecosystem, these areas can redefine the scope of AI applications.

Related reading: Behind the Phala Network’s popularity: Sufficient TEE technology reserves, adopted by ai16z, AI Agent in the right place at the right time

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