NEAR Protocol Advances AI Infrastructure and Scalability Amid Market Consolidation
NVIDIA Partnership Accelerates Enterprise AI Capabilities
NEAR gained GPU resources and VC links through NVIDIA's Inception Program on January 13, 2026, marking a significant milestone for the protocol's enterprise AI ambitions. NEAR AI joined NVIDIA's startup accelerator program, securing access to GPU clusters, technical expertise, and NVIDIA's venture network, building on existing integration of NVIDIA's Confidential Computing into NEAR's AI stack for secure data processing in hardware-isolated environments.
2026 Roadmap Emphasizes AI-Intents Convergence
NEAR Protocol has published its roadmap for 2026, signaling a shift toward artificial intelligence, decentralized trading, and broader protocol adoption, with the Layer 1 blockchain aiming to grow NEAR Intents into a leading venue for on-chain transactions and expand its AI efforts.
The protocol reached a major technical benchmark, hitting one million transactions per second (TPS) in a public test using live core code and accessible hardware during 2025. In 2025, NEAR scaled its mainnet infrastructure from six to nine shards, raising throughput by 50%, with dynamic resharding now active allowing the network to adjust its structure as demand increases.
AI Cloud Tools Reach 100 Million Users
The NEAR Foundation introduced NEAR AI Cloud and Private Chat, which enhance AI interaction while protecting user data through verifiable privacy, with user inputs and outputs cryptographically protected and owned by the user, already integrated into Brave Nightly, OpenMind AGI, and Phala Network applications, reaching over 100 million users.
Governance Evolution Through House of Stake
NEAR is exploring a new governance model called the "House of Stake," which will blend community participation with support from intelligent digital agents capable of representing user intent, moving beyond binary voting by enabling more context-aware decision-making.
Market Performance and Technical Outlook
The live NEAR Protocol price is $1.55 USD with a 24-hour trading volume of $181,933,268 USD, up 0.81% in the last 24 hours. With a price decline of -7.00% in the last 7 days, NEAR Protocol is underperforming the global cryptocurrency market which is up 0.70%.
Cross-Chain Integration Expansion
NEAR Intents aims to expand asset support beyond 120+ coins and integrate with more chains, building on its $6B+ 2025 volume, with upgrades focusing on reducing slippage and improving swap speeds for users.
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