qinbafrank|Feb 23, 2026 08:15
The new era of AI intelligent agents: the future is not about "creating for humans", but about "serving AI". YC's podcast is worth watching. YC executives believe that as the "no human intervention" agent experience matures, in the future, "optimization targets will no longer be humans, but intelligent agents". YC believes that there will be a set of "proxy native" infrastructure, where AI agents may have independent email and phone numbers, and in the future, a proxy specific technology stack may emerge, allowing agents to build applications for agents and even extend to transactions and payments, forming an independent "proxy economy system" and currency system.
The core of change is not "smarter auto completion", but rather users beginning to hand over decision-making power to agents. Harj Taggar bluntly stated, "The key is that there is no need for human intervention... people fully trust agents to make decisions for themselves." He emphasized that when multiple agents run in parallel and users only need to switch between them, "you no longer need to manually manage them.
Around the competitive landscape of developer tools, YC focuses on one judgment: the "default choice" of software is shifting from the human developer community to the recommendation and invocation path of LLM/agents. Jared Friedman mentioned the viewpoint of a tweet: 'From now on, AI agents are the software market.'. ”Diana Hu immediately rewrote YC's classic slogan "Make something people want" into a more direct version: "Build what AI agents want. ”
As more agents take over the execution process, YC believes that a set of "agent native" infrastructure will emerge. Jared Friedman mentioned YC's Agent Mail, which "specifically develops an inbox for AI agents" because traditional email systems "deliberately set up numerous barriers to make it difficult for any automated program to use their product to prevent spam emails". After the rise of OpenClaw, "the situation changed," Harj Taggar described its growth as "explosive.
Harj Taggar even gave a "best practice" suggestion around "proxy identity" and outreach methods: "If you want to have a virtual personal artificial intelligence assistant, the best way is to let it set its own email and phone numbers." The guest also raised a bigger idea: whether there will be a "Twilio like AI proxy dedicated service," or even a "technology stack entirely for native proxies, allowing proxies to build applications for proxies.
Extending further to transactions and payments, Harj Taggar mentioned the possibility of "human currency and intelligent agent currency": "Perhaps at some point, they will have their own economic systems and trade with each other... by then, the value of human currency will become difficult to determine
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