a16z: The payment volume for AI Agents is much lower than the reported data, but infrastructure development is accelerating

SmartContractAuditor · 2026-03-12T06:29:34+00:00

a16z Partner Noah Levine pointed out that although Bloomberg reported AI agents completed $24 million in payments, the actual transaction volume was about $1.6 million. AI payment activities are mainly concentrated in the developer tools sector, with significant infrastructure scale, and the market outlook is expected to be promising. Coinbase also added support for Polygon, with the CEO predicting that AI transaction volume will surpass that of humans.

SmartContractAuditor

2026-03-12 06:29:34

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Odaily Planet Daily reports that a16z partner Noah Levine posted on X stating that a Bloomberg article previously cited data from x402.org claiming AI agents completed $24 million in payments within 30 days. However, Allium Labs data shows that during the same period, AI agent transaction volume was about $3 million, with actual transactions after removing wash trading around $1.6 million.

Levine said that current AI payment activities mainly focus on developer tools, including web scraping platform Firecrawl, AI browser Browserbase, and AI image platform Freepik. Companies like Stripe, Cloudflare, and Vercel have integrated Coinbase’s developed payment standard x402, and Google has embedded this system into its proxy payment protocol. Levine noted that while the $1.6 million transaction volume isn’t large, the infrastructure built around it is substantial. These companies are betting on AI agents becoming the default buyers and the market prospects that come with it.

Additionally, Coinbase announced that its x402 Facilitator now supports Polygon, allowing developers to accept USDC payments on Polygon, Base, and Solana. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong stated that AI agent transaction volume will soon surpass that of humans.

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