BitGo went public last week, with more initial public offerings expected to come from the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence sectors.

Initial trading jumped 25% over offering price for BitGo, and the stock rose over 3% on the day — a successful start for the crypto platform. It’s also a sign that crypto’s momentum isn’t slowing down any time soon, according to theCUBE’s coverage of the NYSE floor.

“[BitGo] has really nailed a product market fit that, one, produces revenue, but they got the most comprehensive platform for this financial wave of scale,” said John Furrier (pictured, left), executive analyst for theCUBE Research. “It’s basically infrastructure as a service … an IaaS layer for crypto infrastructure. They nailed the custody and all the things that go with it. That’s like nailing EC2 compute for AWS.”

On the latest episode of theCUBE Pod, Furrier and Dave Vellante (right), chief analyst for theCUBE Research, discussed BitGo’s IPO and the latest news in AI. They also explored takeaways from the World Economic Forum 2026 meeting in Davos, Switzerland, and the competition in semiconductors.

Is the BitGo IPO crypto’s bellwether?

BitGo essentially functions as a service provider for infrastructure, with everything from wallet services to software developer kits, according to Furrier. He predicts that BitGo will continue to have room to grow as crypto reshapes the financial system.

“When you get the custody, you get the wallet,” Furrier said. “That’s self-custody. Today, moving real world assets, whether it’s equities or mango trees … that’s an owned asset that can be instrumented and a service. Payment rails, settlement rails, all developing an industrial, trusted scale way with BitGo. Then they have two other elements developing in their business: protocol solutions [and] stakings.”

Crypto’s no longer about finding the “shiny new toy,” Vellante added; it now needs trusted platforms that can provide the infrastructure for financial transactions. He predicts that the crypto market is going to increase in options and reach, especially as regulations loosen.

“The killer use case of crypto has always been money and the representation of that is Bitcoin and Ethereum and Solana and all the coins,” Vellante said. “But there’s always been protocols and technology and infrastructure underneath that. The way we transact and the way we sell stuff … is going to completely change over the next 10 years.”

AI arena stays competitive

In response to worries about an AI bubble, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang thinks that AI actually needs more investment. This would, of course, benefit Nvidia, but the response has sparked conversations about the future of AI and how it’s changing the fabric of enterprise tech.

“If you discover something, a unique workflow or a proprietary benefit, you either don’t tell anybody and get there as fast as you can,” Furrier said of the new ethos in Silicon Valley. “The rationale [is] it’s easier to copy than ever before on the product market fit. It’s kind of … slaying the sacred cow of entrepreneurship.”

Between Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, there hasn’t been a lot of room for more breakout AI companies. Vellante expects to see more specialty models emerge — Amazon’s Nova Forge, which enables users to build their own frontier models, could be a sign of a growing trend. Nonetheless, he predicts that OpenAI will maintain its first mover advantage by continuing to innovate.

“People underestimate OpenAI in the enterprise,” he said. “The consumer [focus], it’s not a bug; it’s a feature. You don’t have to be as accurate, but you can improve the accuracy with that volume. And if you can handle that, volume always wins.”

The foundry race and takeaways from Davos

Intel flagged a bit with its latest earnings, with soft guidance for the current quarter. The company has made significant strides in recent years, but closing the gap with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. still appears to be a ways off.

“There’s four major changes at Intel, which were very positive,” Vellante said. “New CEO, and he came in and did some cost-cutting. The injection of cash from Uncle Sam. And … the Nvidia deal. They got cash, and it’s a bridge to the GPU world.”

Last week also saw the annual World Economic Forum. The meeting showed how much technology has merged with politics in recent years, with Greenland and AI as the two biggest topics of discussion. Tech’s presence will only continue to grow on the geopolitical stage, Furrier believes.

“There’s going to be a massive acceleration with crypto and AI,” he said. “I think if you look at the data, technology is going to impact every vertical, every business, every person that either works for a company and gets serviced by a company and then their experience in life.”

Here’s the full episode of this week’s theCUBE Pod:

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Photo: SiliconANGLE