AI, blockchain convergence could create trillion-dollar hyperscaler cloud market: BlackRock
What's the story
Hyperscaler cloud revenues could exceed $1 trillion annually by 2030, a BlackRock report has projected. The surge is expected to be driven by the growing demand for computing resources needed to train and operate artificial intelligence (AI) systems. The study highlighted how compute capacity is emerging as a key economic resource amid the increasing convergence of AI and blockchain-based digital assets.
Market evolution
Compute power: Major new market for digital assets
The report emphasized that compute power is emerging as a major new market for digital assets.
It said, "As agents become more capable and persistent, standardized claims on compute capacity could become a significant digital asset use case for financing and programmable settlement."
This comes as autonomous software agents become more capable and persistent, with liquid compute markets enabling these systems to directly source, optimize, and pay for hardware infrastructure.
Tech synergy
Structural connection between AI and digital assets
The report also noted a structural connection between AI and digital assets.
It said, "AI represents machine-native intelligence, while digital assets represent machine-native money."
This connection is especially important with the rise of agentic AI, which can plan and execute multistep tasks toward a defined objective by interacting with external tools and infrastructure with limited human intervention.
Tech parallelism
Similar tokenization models in AI and digital assets
The report also highlighted that both AI and digital assets use similar tokenization models.
The BlackRock report said, "Large language models parse language into tokens for numerical evaluation, while distributed ledgers register economic entitlements as tokens designed for machine-verifiable transfer."
This parallelism further strengthens the bond between these two sectors in the evolving tech landscape.
Financial evolution
Agentic commerce requires programmable payment rails
The report also noted that agentic commerce requires programmable payment rails. Traditional financial systems aren't ideal for constant, low-value microtransactions.
As a result, autonomous software agents are turning to stablecoins and specialized transfer protocols like x402 and ACP.
The study said, "The structured, machine-readable representations created through LLM and blockchain tokenization can give AI agents a more direct interface with programmable assets."