Here’s why ai16Z surged over 35% today

Agentic AI platform ai16z’s native token has rallied after its founder revealed details about the upcoming update to its AI operating system, Eliza.

ai16z (AI16Z) rose 35% to an intra-day high of $1.27 on Jan. 14, while its market cap surged from $1 billion to nearly $1.4 billion at that time, per data from crypto.news. The rally was fueled by heightened trading activity, with its daily volume jumping 33% over the past day to $646 million. The altcoin was also trending on CoinGecko.

This surge coincided with the overall crypto market recovering from a recent downturn, adding further momentum to AI16Z’s price movement.

AI16Z rallied after the project’s founder, Shaw, shared details about the version 2 update to Eliza, the operating system powering the Agentic AI platform Eliza.

The update will reportedly deliver a suite of advanced features, including full autonomy for seamless operation, unified wallet abstraction for streamlined asset management, and a sophisticated plugin registry to support diverse integrations.

The rally further gained strength after the official technical whitepaper for Eliza was released on Jan. 14.

Meanwhile, demand for the AI-powered meme coin has increased among derivative traders. According to data from CoinGlass, the open interest in the AI16Z futures market rose by 10% over the past day to $193.9 million at the time of writing.

Whale investors, capitalizing on the recent AI Agentic hype, have also shifted their focus to AI16Z. According to an X post by Lookonchain, a whale recently withdrew 5.64 million AI16Z tokens, valued at $6.37 million, from the centralized exchange Gate.io. This whale now holds a total of 15.95 million AI16Z tokens, worth approximately $17.86 million.

Meanwhile, smart money investors have reportedly started accumulating the token as well. See below.

Crypto investors usually view such accumulation trends as bullish, especially for altcoins with smaller market caps.

AI16Z technicals look bullish

Technical indicators point to a potential extension of the current rally.

AI16Z price, 50-day EMA and ADX chart | Source: crypto.news

AI16Z’s price was positioned above the 50-day Moving Average, which means bulls were still in control. This was confirmed by the Average Directional Line indicator, which showed a reading of 40. Typically, a reading above 25 signals strong trend strength.

AI16Z MACD and RSI chart | Source: crypto.news

Further, the histogram bars on the Moving Average Convergence Divergence bars were diminishing in size, which is also a signal for a bullish reversal. Meanwhile, the Relative Strength Index was at 47, which indicates that the altcoin has plenty of room for gains before hitting the overbought zone.