Is AI the new crypto for the struggling esports industry?

Every year it seems like there’s a new experimental industry looking at esports as a quick way to make a quick buck and get some publicity among today’s brainless youth. Gambling, crypto, NFT and now AI?

While places like Yahoo Finance will tell you that esports is a booming industry worth billions, anyone working in esports could easily demystify that. Many organizations operate in the red, relying on sponsorships and cash rewards to stay afloat.

As a strange new industry full of experimentation, innovation, and confusion, esports teams and tournament organizers are a bit susceptible to outside influences. There’s a reason Saudi Arabia can so easily take over the entirety of esports, paying teams and fans to show up and buying out all the struggling TOs.

This has also led to esports organizations agreeing to many strange collaborations with questionable companies just to get money. This includes the US Army, Immutable and Crypto.com.

The last one? AI.

Esports community concerned about AI infiltration

The esports community has never appreciated AI. Even when esports organizations shared seemingly innocent tweets with trending AI art challenges, fans reacted with utter frustration.

That hasn’t stopped major esports organization Cloud9 from collaborating with JetBrains, an AI-powered coding software development tool. Together, JetBrains and Cloud9 will “enhance cultural relevance” in the esports ecosystem.

This includes JetBrains hosting a hackathon and creating content for Cloud9, detailing how AI-based tools help operations in League of Legends, VALORANT, Rainbow Six Siege X, and Call of Duty. I imagine it will go horribly, but we’ll have to wait and see how esports fans react to AI infiltrating these games in 2026.

“At Cloud9, we are driven by a simple but powerful purpose: to inspire and connect gamers around the world,” said Jonathan Tran, President of Cloud9. “This isn’t just another sponsorship, it’s a working model of how technology and esports can come together to spark innovation, creativity and opportunity.”

Cloud9 is no stranger to working with controversial and weird AI-related companies. It previously collaborated with Theta Network to launch a Cloud9-branded AI chatbot called Nimbus.

This trend probably won’t stop anytime soon.