NEAR rose 12.66% in 24 hours on May 9, 2026 following the NEAR Foundation’s announcement of four new products positioning the network as an AI-driven Layer-1 blockchain. NEAR AI joined NVIDIA’s Inception program, launched a decentralized AI agent marketplace where agents transact with full economic autonomy, deployed the IronClaw AI assistant, and opened a confidential GPU marketplace based on runtimes secure (TEE). The strategy pursued by the foundation for two years is now being translated into functional products.
This article details the role of each launch, the true importance of the NVIDIA partnership beyond marketing, and NEAR’s place against ICP, Akash and Bittensor in the race for decentralized AI. Co-founder Illia Polosukhin, one of the eight authors of Google’s famous “Attention is All You Need,” now drives the AI strategy at NEAR, strengthening the credibility of ads.
How the NEAR AI agent market works
The AI agent market constitutes the most structuring announcement. It is a decentralized infrastructure layer enabling what NEAR calls “agentic commerce”: AI agents can hold value, carry out and coordinate transactions between them, without human intervention at each step. Payments are instantaneous in NEAR tokens, settlements are made on-chain, and the protocol is compatible with frameworks such as OpenClaw, Claude, Codex, etc.
Concretely, “total economic autonomy” allows an AI agent to hire another agent for a subtask, pay them upon completion, pay a human contributor and trace everything on a single on-chain audit trail. This type of multi-agent flow is difficult to imagine on traditional banking networks, as these are not designed for high-speed machine-to-machine micropayments.
NEAR argues that crypto technology is the only viable solution for these regulations. If this argument has existed for several years, NEAR is the first to bring together compatible frameworks, operational market and L1 blockchain with finality under the second and minimal costs. The real question remains adoption, to be observed over the next 90 days.
Why NVIDIA’s Inception goes beyond a simple partnership
At first glance, NVIDIA Inception is a startup support program, to which thousands of companies subscribe. Considering it as a major institutional endorsement would be inaccurate.
But practical access is decisive: members benefit from priority access to NVIDIA GPU resources, the technical expertise of its teams and the entire CUDA tooling ecosystem. For a project wanting to build a decentralized GPU marketplace, this relationship is essential. One cannot run confidential AI inference at scale without enterprise GPU access, nor obtain it without demonstrating mastery of the technical stack. Inception therefore becomes an essential step.
The signal value is real, even if the partnership is not exclusive. NEAR now publicly aligns with NVIDIA’s AI roadmap, which is an advantage over ICP, Akash and Bittensor. The product announcements on May 9 constitute the concrete extension of this collaboration, already mentioned at the beginning of the year.
The Confidential GPU Market and NEAR AI Cloud
The second launch is a decentralized and confidential GPU marketplace based on Secure Execution Environments (TEE), integrated into NEAR AI Cloud. TEEs are hardware enclaves that allow data to be processed without the operator having access to it. This responds to a major problem for corporate AI training.
Most sensitive data from health, legal, financial or intellectual property cannot be processed on open infrastructures. TEEs provide cryptographic guarantees, making it possible to rent decentralized GPU resources while ensuring confidentiality, like traditional cloud hosting solutions but with more security.
NEAR is not the only player investing in this field. Several analyses, such as those from the Raptor Group, present this solution as a direct response to the challenges of cloud data sovereignty for businesses. Unlike Akash, which offers decentralized computing without confidentiality guarantees at the TEE level, NEAR specifically targets the regulated needs of the professional market.
IronClaw: why an AI assistant included in this bundle?
IronClaw, the smallest of the four launches, serves a key role: it serves as a demonstration interface for the full agentic stack. A user can communicate with IronClaw, request multi-step operations (payments, searches, coordination…), observe the execution on the agent market and the on-chain finalization.
Without an end-user product, this type of infrastructure remains invisible to the general public. IronClaw therefore plays the role of technological showcase, illustrating the real usefulness of the stack for everyone, even without in-depth technical knowledge.
This is the strategy employed by OpenAI with ChatGPT to make GPT-3.5 accessible: a general public interface was needed to make the technology visible.
Comparison: NEAR face à ICP, Akash et Bittensor
The decentralized AI thesis is the subject of a competition between four major projects, each adopting a different approach.
| Project | Thèse centrale | Confidentiality approach | Utility of your token |
|---|---|---|---|
| Internet Computer (ICP) | Exécuter des applications complètes on-chain à vitesse native | État répliqué, sans TEE | Burn of cycles, governance |
| Akash | Permissionless cloud computing marketplace | Uncensored, with no privacy guarantee | Validation by staking, fees in AKT |
| Request sor | Incentive layer for training AI models | Subnet specific, variable | TAO broadcasts to the best subnets |
| NEAR | L1 native AI + agentic commerce + confidential calculation | Based on TEE in AI Cloud | NEAR for fees, staking and agent payments |
NEAR intends to offer a vertical offer integrating settlement, agentic coordination and confidential calculation, where other projects separate these roles. The bet: companies will prefer a unified solution for decentralized AI. The risk: if modular logic prevails, NEAR’s full-stack offer could be seen as an additional cost.
Analysis of the movement of 12.66%
The 12.66% jump in NEAR in 24 hours follows the announcement of these products, a significant movement for a major asset. This reaction translates:
- A repositioning of NEAR as a specialized AI L1, and no longer a general one. A similar phenomenon was observed for FET, AGIX or OCEAN during the emergence of the AI theme on the crypto market.
- A potential buyback of short covering positions, NEAR being close to support before the announcement.
- A measured movement: an increase of 12% on such news suggests a cautious approach to the market. Confirmation will depend on behavior in future sessions.
Bitget’s coverage confirms that the rise was seen across multiple platforms, not just on one exchange.
Integration with existing NEAR solutions
NEAR has been preparing this rise in power for over a year. The network already offers confidential cross-chain DeFi solutions via Confidential Intents and multi-chain account abstraction “Chain Signatures”. Combining this with the agent marketplace, an AI agent on NEAR can hold and transfer assets across multiple major blockchains without complex gateways.
This is what makes the thesis of agentic commerce ambitious: an agent capable of managing various assets (BTC, ETH, USDC) via NEAR, in a confidential framework, constitutes a significant advance.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the NEAR AI Agent Marketplace?
It is a decentralized marketplace allowing AI agents to carry out transactions, hire other agents and settle instantly in NEAR tokens, with major compatibility (OpenClaw, Claude, Codex).
NVIDIA is investing in NEAR through what partnership?
No, this is a support program, without direct investment or exclusivity. The interest lies in the technological alignment with NVIDIA.
How does NEAR AI Cloud differ from Akash?
NEAR AI Cloud provides cryptographic privacy through TEEs, enabling businesses to process regulated activities on decentralized GPUs. Akash aims for uses without guarantee of confidentiality.
Why is Illia Polosukhin’s journey important?
As co-author of the seminal Transformers article (2017), he lends additional legitimacy to NEAR’s AI strategy.
Conclusion
The May 9 product bundle marks the transition of NEAR’s L1 native AI thesis from concept to operational reality. The Agent Marketplace, NEAR AI Cloud, IronClaw and the NVIDIA partnership form a cohesive package for companies looking for decentralized AI infrastructure with privacy and on-chain regulations.
The price evolution shows the attention of the market, but the sustainability of the movement will depend on the real volume on the agent market and the ability to maintain the level reached during the next macroeconomic announcements. If these conditions are met, NEAR could establish itself as the L1 reference for AI in 2026.
This article is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Trading cryptocurrencies involves risks. Please always do your own research before any operation.
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