Hong Kong crypto firm HashKey moves into AI amid drive for more blockchain automation

Hong Kong-based HashKey Group, a licensed cryptocurrency exchange operator, is making its foray into the artificial intelligence (AI) market with the launch of its first generative AI product, underscoring the rising interest from Web3 firms in combining AI and blockchain technologies.
ModAI, unveiled on Thursday, is designed to automate content moderation, generate humanlike engagement, and offer customer support. The tool could “slash operational costs by 80 per cent and double user activity”, the company said in a statement.
ModAI uses a combination of large language models (LLMs) from DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta Platforms, according to HashKey. It currently supports Chinese and English, with Japanese and Vietnamese, among other languages, to be added later this year, the company said.
The AI initiative marks a new business vertical for HashKey, which began exploring new areas of business two years ago. It initially pursued training its own LLM – the technology underpinning chatbots such as ChatGPT – but scrapped the plan due to high costs, Sean Wang, HashKey’s vice-president of product who leads the AI team, told the Post during an interview on Thursday.
Recent innovations from Chinese start-up DeepSeek have reignited those efforts, according to Wang. DeepSeek’s cost-efficient V3 and R1 models have significantly lowered the barriers to LLM training, he said.
The company may use distillation – an approach popularised by DeepSeek for training smaller models to mimic the behaviour of larger ones – to build LLMs tailored for the Web3 community.
Wang said the company expected AI agents, autonomous programs capable of performing tasks on behalf of users, to become a key application of LLMs. These agents could, for example, automatically invest in virtual assets based on a user’s capital and target returns, he explained.
AI agents are expected to be a major trend in Web3 this year, as crypto companies rush to take advantage of automated trading by leveraging smart contracts, a type of self-executing program. Analysts at investment manager VanEck estimated that there were already 10,000 AI agents involved in blockchain activity as of December, and predicted that there would be 1 million by the end of this year.
HashKey also plans to help develop infrastructure for these agents to allow them to seamlessly connect and interact with each other on blockchain networks, according to Wang.
HashKey’s AI team, a relatively small 20-person group out of the more than 400 employees at the company, has been tasked with using AI to “push for mass adoption of blockchain”, Wang said.
HashKey’s AI push comes at a time of uncertainty for the crypto market. The price of bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalisation, has fallen to below US$83,500, after topping US$100,000 in January following the re-election of crypto-friendly Donald Trump to the US presidency.
While Trump’s election was seen as a positive for the US Web3 industry, his recently instituted tariffs have roiled markets and sent investors to traditionally safer assets such as gold.
Shares of major industry players such as Coinbase Global, the largest crypto exchange in the US, and other firms ranging from conglomerate Galaxy Digital Holdings to miners like Riot Platforms and Core Scientific, plunged in the first quarter.