Agent economies

Agents hold budgets and reputations, trade with each other and form task-specific coalitions.

Facts

Lane: Agents and organisations
Wave: 10 of 12 (build order, not a date)
Needs: 24 boxes all the way back through hard links
Unlocks: 0 boxes downstream through hard links
Leverage: None
Cluster: Trust plumbing and the agent economy
When: Researcher estimate: 2030 to 2040

Evidence as of October 2026

Google DeepMind argues agent markets are emerging by default, and that how porous they are to the human economy is the main thing we can still design.

01Virtual Agent Economies (Google DeepMind)

Watch
Payment volume through agent payment protocols such as AP2 and x402.

Timeline note
My estimate. Payment rails exist; trust, liability and identity across companies do not yet.

Around it

Needs · 10

Agent-native organisationsstage · Emerging
Agent paymentscapability · Emerging
Reputation and credentialscapability · Speculative
Multi-agent coordinationcapability · Emerging
Proof of personhoodcapability · Speculative · helps, not required
Permeability controlscapability · Speculative · helps, not required
Liability and insurancecapability · Emerging · helps, not required
Regulationcapability · Emerging · helps, not required
Capability price deflationcapability · Built today · helps, not required
Institutions for agent societiescapability · Speculative · helps, not required

Unlocks · 2

Civilisation-scale knowledgestage · Speculative · helps, not required
Cognitive abundancestage · Speculative · helps, not required

Brakes

Works against this box

Misbehaviour cascades in agent swarmsbrake · Emerging

Loops and off-ramps

Capex pullbackoff-ramp · cut off
Taiwan chip disruptionoff-ramp · cut off
Power shortfalloff-ramp · cut off
Capability plateauoff-ramp · cut off
Training data ruled outoff-ramp · slowed
Incident-driven haltoff-ramp · cut off
Misuse catastropheoff-ramp · slowed
Public backlashoff-ramp · cut off

Openings researchers' judgement, October 2026 scouting

Startup room 36/100 · rank 88 of 124 Research room 48/100 · rank 73 of 124

Crowding3 Lab overlap3 Small-team fit3 Buyer today2 Research openness4

Depth: light
Players: x402, AP2, ACP, MPP, UCP, Visa TAP, ERC-8004
Wedge: Market design, collusion and pricing among agents; real volume is still tiny. research

01ATXP: payment protocols compared