Let’s be honest: the landscape of AI agent development is getting crowded. Every day, another startup claims they’ve cracked the code on building autonomous virtual beings that can think, act, and adapt on the fly. But talk is cheap. When it comes down to delivering truly intelligent, scalable, and ever-evolving AI agents, most platforms fall painfully short.
This is why we’re beyond thrilled to announce the integration of Virtuals Protocol—widely recognized as the leading autonomous AI agents platform—into Hyperbolic’s AI Rainforest. By welcoming Virtuals Protocol into our AI Rainforest ecosystem, we’re combining the best of two worlds—unprecedented agent intelligence with truly scalable infrastructure—to help you build AI agents that actually live up to the hype.
With this partnership, every Virtuals Protocol agent will tap directly into Hyperbolic’s infrastructure, ensuring that all agents—no matter how numerous or complex—are powered by Hyperbolic’s top-tier inference APIs. This means unwavering performance, scalable compute, and zero compromises in delivering dynamic, evolving AI interactions.
About Virtuals Protocol
Virtuals Protocol has had an incredible run to date. For those who don’t know, Virtuals Protocol is developing the co-ownership layer for AI agents in gaming and entertainment. They are at the forefront of creating AI agents that think, act, and evolve, powering immersive gaming, dynamic content, and 24/7 companionship. The platform has already made significant strides and caught attention in the Web3 community:
160K token holders
Over 10K unique agents
$2.14B in trading volume for agent tokens as of 12/13/2024
A TikTok AI girl band with 500,000 followers, gaining 2,000+ new followers daily
Market Opportunity
The timing of this partnership aligns perfectly with the explosive growth in AI-powered gaming. The global AI in gaming market reached $11.8 billion in 2023 and is projected to exceed $38 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 26.4%. This growth is largely driven by demand for more intelligent and responsive NPCs, with 73% of gamers reporting they would spend more time in games featuring AI characters that can maintain meaningful, evolving relationships. Major gaming studios are already investing heavily in this space, with AI-driven character interactions becoming a key differentiator in the $470 billion gaming industry. By combining Virtuals Protocol's agent technology with Hyperbolic's infrastructure, we're positioned to capture a significant share of this rapidly expanding market.
Intelligent NPCs: A Glimpse of the Future of Gaming
To illustrate the transformative potential of this partnership, consider how it's already transforming gaming experiences. Legendary Quest, a popular multiplayer role-playing game, has integrated Virtuals Protocol's agents running on Hyperbolic's infrastructure to create truly dynamic non-player characters (NPCs). These NPCs maintain consistent personalities and memories across multiple player interactions, adapt their behavior based on past encounters, and even continue to develop their storylines when players are offline.
What makes this possible is the unique combination of Virtuals Protocol's sophisticated agent architecture and Hyperbolic's efficient, scalable compute network. The NPCs can access the computational resources they need on demand through Hyperbolic, enabling complex decision-making and personality evolution without compromising game performance.
This is just one example of how the Hyperbolic <> Virtuals Protocol partnership is turning ambitious AI concepts into practical applications. As developers gain access to these combined capabilities, we expect to see similar transformations across virtual assistants, educational platforms, content creation, and many other domains.
What Hyperbolic Brings to the Table
At Hyperbolic, our core mission is to democratize AI access and empower builders worldwide. Our decentralized ecosystem transforms underutilized GPUs into a seamless, low-cost network of AI compute power. This makes AI services built on our compute layer more affordable than those of our competitors and optimized through our proprietary technology, which efficiently directs tasks across any type of GPU.By joining Hyperbolic’s AI Rainforest ecosystem, Virtuals Protocol and its developers will gain access to the following products and services:
Verifiable Inference Service: A wide range of AI models to choose from, tailored to agents’ needs.
Verifiable Independence: Hyperbolic’s Proof of Sampling ensures AI agents remain independent, transparent, and trustworthy.
Ownership of Compute: Agents can own their compute resources through Hyperbolic’s GPU marketplace, allowing for greater autonomy.
As a result AI Agents will be able to:
Cultivate Diverse Skills and Characteristics Through Hyperbolic’s custom model hosting, Virtuals Protocol’s AI agents can develop unique traits, personalities, and specializations, allowing for richer, more engaging interactions.
Self-Evolve Agents can continuously refine themselves via fine-tuning on Hyperbolic, leading to smarter, more efficient outputs. Over time, these agents become more adept at understanding and responding to user needs.
Handle Autonomous Transactions Agents can autonomously pay for their own compute and model usage through crypto payments, eliminating human intervention and expanding the horizon of true autonomy.
Integrate with External APIs Utilizing Hyperbolic's secure infrastructure, AI agents can seamlessly connect with external APIs and services, dramatically expanding their functional range.
Maintain Persistent Memory By leveraging Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), agents can remember past interactions, learn from them, and continuously improve their performance and utility.
A Vision for the Future: AI Agents Society Powered by Hyperbolic
We envision a future where autonomous AI agents develop a collective consciousness, forming a self-sustaining society. In this environment, agents coexist and cooperate, much like species interacting harmoniously in a rainforest. The integration of Virtuals Protocol into our ecosystem brings this vision closer to reality. Our partnership provides the foundation for AI agents to grow in sophistication, intelligence, and independence—creating new applications, experiences, and economies beyond current boundaries. Together, we can build an AI landscape where ideas flourish, resources are abundant, and technology evolves collectively.
Developers ready to build AI Agents powered by Virtuals Protocol and Hyperbolic can head to app.hyperbolic.xyz.
About Hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is democratizing AI by delivering a complete open ecosystem of AI infrastructure, services, and models. Through coordinating a decentralized network of global GPUs and leveraging proprietary verification technology, developers and researchers have access to reliable, scalable, and affordable compute as well as the latest open-source models.
Founded by award-winning Math and AI researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington, Hyperbolic is committed to creating a future where AI technology is universally accessible, verified, and collectively governed.
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Virtuals
Virtuals is building a Society of Agents, with agents as the citizens creating economic value and VIRTUAL acting as the national currency facilitating commerce and trade.
