The volume of payment transactions between artificial intelligence agents is more than 90% lower than reported, but the crypto giants are pouring billions to build the infrastructure around it.
AI agents are starting to buy things, but “the numbers are inconsistent,” Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) partner Noah Levin said in an X message on Wednesday.
He said a Bloomberg article on Saturday reported that AI agents paid $24 million in 30 days citing x402.org data.
Levine said data from Allium Labs shows that the AI agent generated about $3 million in sales over the same period. Filtering out the wash trades lowers the estimate to about $1.6 million, he added, adding that it’s still early days.
“This gap tells you how early the measurement infrastructure is.”
Much of the AI payment activity revolves around developer tools, Levin said. Firecrawl, a platform that turns websites into AI-ready data, sells web scraping for 1 cent per request, Browserbase, an AI-focused browser, sells browsing sessions, and AI imaging platform Freepik sells image generation.
“These companies accept all cards, but x402 allows a developer or agent to try the tool once without signing up,” Levine said.
x402 is a simple payment standard developed by Coinbase that allows AI agents to automatically complete payments over the internet.
The adoption of the agency payment protocol is increasing
Levine noted that major payment and Internet companies such as Stripe, Cloudflare and Vercel have integrated x402, while Google has integrated the system into its agent payments protocol.
He added that $1.6 million “isn’t a big number, but the infrastructure that’s being built around it is.”
“None of them are betting on $1.6 million a month. They’re betting on what that number is when agents become default buyers.”
related to: Alchemy introduces independent payment rails for AI agents in Base
Levin said that while humans are involved, interactions are driven by agency platforms such as Claude Code and OpenClaw’s AI personal assistant, which makes transactions semi-autonomous.
Coinbase x402 Facilitator Launches on Polygon
Meanwhile, Coinbase announced Thursday that its Facilitator x402 will add support for Polygon’s Ethereum layer-2 network, allowing developers to accept stablecoin USDC (USDC) payments on Polygon, Base, and Solana.
“Networks optimized for fast settlements and minimal fees are critical to the viability of these machine-to-machine payments,” it said.
“Soon, AI agents will outnumber humans doing transactions,” Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said Monday.
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