Author: Guy Wuollet, General Partner at a16z Frontier

Translator: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

Uber provides you with a simple way to express what you want: a ride service from one place to another. The network finds drivers willing to offer the service at a price you can accept. More drivers increase the availability of rides for passengers, and more passengers give drivers a reason to join.

I believe that agents will make it possible to build such networks around a broader range of goods and services. They can help people express more complex preferences and find vendors willing to meet those preferences. Some of these exchanges are already happening, but prices or complexities keep most people out. Others are simply not arranged due to the overwhelming amount of work required to set them up. Agents will also make possible exchanges we haven't yet thought to request. All of this is an opportunity for founders.

Consider a simple and familiar example: organizing dinner with a group of friends. Everyone has different schedules, budgets, and opinions on where to eat. Today, there will ultimately be one friend responsible for running the group chat: gathering these preferences, searching for restaurants, and coming back to the group when available options don’t work. Meanwhile, a restaurant has tables to fill on Tuesday nights, but has limited ways to reach a group that remains flexible in planning.

Your personal agent coordinates with your friends or with their agents to agree on a request: arranging dinner for six at Mission, under $60 per person, at any time between 5:30 and 8:00, anything but sushi. The restaurant’s agents respond with offers based on available tables. One restaurant offers a better price for a 5:30 seating. Another composes a family-style menu for the group. Your agent compares these offers based on everyone’s preferences and completes the reservation within the agreed limits.

A restaurant with an available table at six can directly send an offer to a group willing to dine earlier before they decide where to eat. The group has preferences and a budget. The restaurant has capacity and the price it is willing to accept. What’s missing is a network that allows their agents to find each other and agree on a transaction.

Uber showcased how a network can bring buyers and vendors together around a relatively simple request. Agents can expand that model to encompass more complex purchases, such as arranging dinner for a group. Most networks are built for humans. We need to build them for machines. Founders can create venues where agents bring these requests, while vendors compete to fulfill them.

Building Networks

Crypto has already provided a model for organizing these requests using intents: users specify a desired outcome, and providers compete to deliver it. For example, on UniswapX, users sign an order specifying the tokens they want to trade and the terms they will accept. Providers compete to execute that order, seeking liquidity from various sources. Agents can help extend the intents model to everyday commerce. A LLM can turn a conversation into requests that vendors can act upon, and agents can search for offers and negotiate details. This could make even a small purchase like a dinner for six cheap enough to arrange in this way.

The same network effects that make Uber useful could also develop around these more complex purchases. Each restaurant that joins adds another possible match for diners, especially when a group has specific requirements. More groups provide restaurants with more opportunities to fill tables, making it worthwhile for a booking system that connects them to respond with tailored offers. As participation in a city grows, the network becomes useful for a broader variety of requests.

A founder can start with dining in a city and build from there. The initial product needs to save people enough time or money to bring their friends along. Restaurants need to see reservations that they wouldn't receive otherwise. These results keep both sides coming back and inviting others.

I believe that a consumer-facing agent can be free to use and earn money through a model similar to payment for order flow. Users specify what they want and what they are willing to pay, while providers compete to fulfill the request. If that agent proposes arranging dinner for $300 and finds a restaurant willing to provide it for $270, the network can keep the difference. It can also charge a fee for routing that purchase to the restaurant. Revenue from these transactions can cover the reasoning costs for consumers. Users should understand how their agent gets paid and how it makes choices among offers. Whether they are willing to outsource purchases will depend on their trust in those choices.

Why These Businesses Can Sustain

As AI makes software easier to replicate, networks of people and businesses willing to transact through it become a more significant source of advantage. Some of the best businesses of the internet era, including Facebook, eBay, and Uber, become more useful as people join.

An agent business network can develop the same types of advantages. Competitors can build similar software, but it still has to bring together reliable buyers and suppliers for transactions. In the restaurant example, this means having enough local restaurants willing to make offers, and enough groups ready to book.

Making these transactions reliable is part of building the network. A restaurant needs to know that an agent is authorized to commit the group’s funds. Diners need to know that accepting an offer locks in that table at the agreed price. The network will need a way to verify the agent’s authority, record booking terms, and arrange payment. If the group cancels, or the restaurant fails to fulfill that reservation, both sides should know what will happen.

Founders can build these services alongside the market itself. As buyers and suppliers transact, the network can form a record of who delivered what they promised, and a set of processes for resolving disputes. A network that helps participants find good offers and reliably complete purchases is the same network they will return to for the next transaction.

What Else Can Founders Build?

Dinner is my toy example. There are many other networks that agents can help build. Some possibilities:

Travel. A personal agent coordinates a group’s schedules and budgets, then negotiates with hotels and other providers for a trip that works for everyone. Flexibility on dates or destinations creates room for offers that a fixed search would miss.

Commercial procurement. A business’s agent stays online around the clock, negotiating future supplies and price commitments with vendors. It compares delivery schedules and payment terms along with prices, helping buyers lock in costs and providing sellers with more predictable demand.

Computing power marketplaces. Agents match workloads with available capacity based on hardware requirements, location, and timing. Businesses can also purchase future capacity, hedging against computing costs as their needs grow.

Arbitration. Parties agree to use a shared forum to resolve disputes faster than existing legal systems. Every buyer and supplier adopting the same rules makes the forum more attractive to the next participant.

Physical device networks. Agents purchase services from drone networks or data from connected devices. Each new provider expands the coverage of the network or adds a service needed by other participants.

Collaborative health research. People pool health data and participate in crowdsourced research. More contributors support larger-scale studies and explore questions that smaller groups could not address.

There are also people-centered network opportunities. As intelligence becomes cheaper, people will still need ways to establish identity, vouch for someone's qualifications, and build trust. Credential networks, membership clubs, and other organizations may become more valuable as more work occurs outside of traditional institutions.

The opportunity lies in finding exchanges that people want to make, but today take too much time or money to coordinate. Some of the biggest ones will almost certainly be exchanges we have not yet imagined. Start with a specific market, get those exchanges running, and reward each party for bringing more participants. If you are building an agent network, I would love to hear from you.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到[email protected]，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。