Bankless · Tuesday, August 11, 2026
NEAR operates as a vertically integrated stack where its blockchain, confidential intents, and AI cloud support each other. This integration allows for functionalities like calling AI inference directly from smart contracts, enabling autonomous businesses.
“So I think of Near less as a collection and more as a vertically integrated stack. So each piece actually builds on top of each other. Intense is obviously using all the blockchain tech. There's kind of our core cryptography primitives at the core. And so Near AI actually builds on top of all of that.”
“You can have, for example, fully autonomous business, right? That runs on Ironclaw, uses inference, has near on a balance sheet to always have inference, right? Like that's, you know, one thing like this, like you don't want business that like runs out of AI credits and now is not able to run.”
“You can actually call an AI inference out of your smart contract. Because the transaction can actually pause, wait for AI inference, and unpause the transaction and continue. So inside, like literally a token transfer, you can call AI, right, get the response and decide how you want to transfer a token, for example.”