The metaverse isn't a place: Why Animoca’s Yat Siu says the future is 100 billion AI agents

Yat Siu said the metaverse is evolving beyond immersive digital worlds, with AI agents increasingly handling commerce, payments and coordination through blockchain infrastructure in the background. What to know : Animoca Brands chairman Yat Siu argued that the metaverse’s next phase will be driven by fleets of AI agents transacting on blockchains rather than humans in immersive virtual worlds. Siu predicted tens of billions of autonomous AI agents will handle bookings, payments, and online transactions in the background, using blockchain as their financial and identity infrastructure. He said this “agent economy” could solve crypto’s user-onboarding problem and announced a $10 million Animoca Minds initiative to fund developers building AI agent applications.