Coinbase Tests AI Agents as Virtual Coworkers While Launching Marketplace for Autonomous Transactions

Coinbase Tests AI Agents Modeled on 'Legendary' Former Execs - Decrypt

CEO Brian Armstrong predicted that Coinbase will employ more AI agents than human staff "at some point soon." Coinbase is testing AI agents modeled after co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former CTO Balaji Srinivasan that integrate into workplace communications to provide employee feedback, CEO Brian Armstrong announced Saturday. The Fred agent functions as a strategic executive assistant, helping staff "refine documents, strategies, and concepts," while the Balaji agent is intended to "spark innovation and new perspectives." Both Ehrsam and Srinivasan shaped Coinbase's early growth, with Armstrong characterizing them as "legendary former Coinbase employees" in Monday's announcement. Coinbase engineer Travis Bloom reported discussing a new idea with the Balaji agent, saying it "really helped crystallize the vision." Armstrong added that as a "next step," the exchange would "make it easy for any employee to spin up other agent employees" and that future agents will likely not be "digital twins" of real individuals. The executive AI agents complement Coinbase's broader artificial intelligence infrastructure, which includes machine learning tools designed to predict user traffic and automatically scale its resources. In February, the exchange launched Agentic Wallets enabling AI systems to hold funds, execute trades, and process onchain transactions independently. These wallets align with Coinbase's x402 protocol under development for autonomous crypto payments without human intervention. The exchange has positioned itself as a leader in combining artificial intelligence with blockchain infrastructure. The move builds on last September's creation of x402 Bazaar, a stablecoin payments ecosystem for AI agents. Armstrong noted that, "I suspect we will have more agents than human employees at some point soon."

Coinbase's x402 Launches Marketplace Platform for AI Agents

Coinbase's x402 AI payments protocol has launched Agentic.market, a platform where AI agents can discover and use AI-friendly services. Coinbase-backed artificial intelligence payments standard x402 has launched a marketplace for apps and services to boost the usefulness of AI agents. Coinbase product lead Nick Prince said in a video posted on X on Monday that the idea behind the platform, called Agentic.market, was to "give humans and their agents access to thousands of services, with zero API keys required." Prince, in a separate post, said the market was a "storefront for discovering, comparing, and using x402 services" and offers access to a wide variety of apps and websites that AI agents can use, such as CoinGecko, Google Flights and the social media site X. He added that hundreds of thousands of AI agents have transacted hundreds of millions in volume, but AI agent users have "relied on fragmented sources and word-of-mouth" to find compatible services. The x402 protocol, launched by Coinbase in May 2025, allows AI agents to make internet payments using stablecoins and has seen growing support as many companies believe AI technology will become more involved in commerce. Prince said the marketplace has a web interface "for humans to browse and evaluate services" and a programming layer that allows AI agents access to the platform to "search, filter, and integrate new capabilities autonomously at runtime without a human in the loop." The platform provides an AI agent with "skills," or code on how to use a service, along with a wallet that gives it the ability to "buy services and also sell services," Prince added. The x402 protocol, named after the rarely used HTTP status code "402 Payment Required," received support earlier this month from Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, which backed the creation of the x402 Foundation to govern the protocol. American Express, Mastercard, Visa, Cloudflare, Shopify, Stripe, Circle, Base, Polygon Labs, the Solana Foundation, Thirdweb and KakaoPay also expressed their "initial intent and support" of the foundation. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said at the time that "there will be more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon," echoing Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire, who in January said that "literally billions of AI agents" will be transacting on blockchains in three to five years.

Coinbase Introduces Two AI Agents to Assist Workers

Brian Armstrong has now predicted that AI agents will not only transact onchain more than humans but will outnumber employees at his company very soon. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said the company has started testing AI agents on Slack and email to assist employees with work tasks, continuing the company's efforts to embed AI into its workflows. In a post to X on Saturday, Armstrong said the company has already deployed two AI agents, modeled after two former executives, speculating that AI agents could eventually outnumber human employees at the crypto exchange. "Soon, it will be easy for any employee to spin up a new agent for themselves or their team. I suspect we will have more agents than human employees at some point soon." Major tech companies have laid off thousands of employees this year as they increased their reliance on AI. Armstrong has been pushing for AI to automate more workflows at Coinbase, stating in September that he wants more than 50% of the company's code to be written by AI. A month before, Coinbase said one of its biggest focuses is to transform its more than 4,000-member workforce into "AI-Natives." One of the AI agents is Fred, named after Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. Fred will serve as the company's "strategic executive agent," assisting Coinbase workers with strategic clarity and priority alignment while offering executive-level feedback. The other is Balaji, the agent of chaos and creativity who was modeled after Coinbase's former chief technology officer, Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji has been brought in to challenge assumptions and assist Coinbase employees with thinking outside the box in an effort to "spark innovation." Coinbase has also contributed to the agentic AI wave, having launched the x402 protocol for agentic AI payments on crypto and fiat rails in May 2025. The move comes amid a broad industry belief that AI agents could become the dominant users of blockchain payments in the coming years. Related: How AI agents can reshape arbitrage in prediction markets Earlier this month, Armstrong predicted there will be "more AI agents transacting online than humans very soon," echoing comments from Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire in January that "literally billions of AI agents" will be transacting onchain in three to five years. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao also said in January that crypto is the "native currency for AI agents," which will handle everything from buying tickets to paying bills without credit cards.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Introduces New Platform To Help AI Agents Discover And Pay For Services

The Marketplace For AI Agents Armstrong took to X to share the news about the launch of Agentic(.)market, deeming it a "discovery layer" for AI agents. "For the agentic economy to overtake the human economy, agents need a way to discover services," Armstrong stated. Important Details To Know The platform's website calls it "the home for tracking adoption of agentic commerce." It featured various services, spanning social media, travel, infrastructure, and cryptocurrency intelligence. Users can get their agents added to the marketplace to access these services. Additionally, they could get their own services listed and add payment support. The only condition is that they should be compatible with the x402 payments standard. The Rise Of Agentic Commerce Agentic payments mark a significant leap in fintech, where AI agents go beyond reasoning and recommendation to finalize transactions on behalf of humans. Armstrong had earlier expressed confidence that AI agents would increasingly transact using cryptocurrency wallets and may soon execute more financial transactions than humans. Last month, the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial (WLFI) platform launched its own payment infrastructure, enabling agents to make payments using the World Liberty Financial USD (USD1) stablecoin. Price Action: Coinbase shares rose 0.05% in overnight trading after closing 2.57% higher at $211.63 during Monday's regular trading session, according to Benzinga Pro. COIN stock excelled in short-term price gains but underperformed in medium- and long-term horizons, paired with a very low Momentum score, according to Benzinga's Edge Stock Rankings. Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Photo courtesy: Shutterstock By Thrive Studios ID Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Coinbase Tests AI 'Coworkers' in Slack as It Expands Agent Strategy

The experiment lands as Coinbase expands a wider AI push that already includes internal enterprise agents, AgentKit tooling and agent-focused wallet infrastructure. Coinbase is testing workplace AI agents inside Slack and email as the company pushes further into agent-based software across its internal operations and developer stack. CEO Brian Armstrong said the agents show up "just like any human teammate," with the first two modeled after former Coinbase leaders Fred Ehrsam and Balaji Srinivasan. Armstrong said the agents are being introduced to give employees high-level input inside everyday communication channels, and suggested Coinbase will make it easier for teams to create more of them over time. Coinbase's AI Push Was Already Underway The Slack and email rollout builds on work Coinbase had already described months earlier. In a December 2025 engineering post, the company said it formed an "Agentic AI Tiger Team" to build enterprise AI agents and establish internal standards for trust, scale and repeatability. Coinbase said those efforts focused on institutional support, onramp onboarding and listing legal review. The rollout fits a broader internal AI strategy at Coinbase, where the company has already described agents as tools for real workflows across teams, supported by auditability and monitoring. From Internal Tools to Onchain Agents Coinbase is not limiting its AI push to internal workflows. The company has also been building tools for developers who want AI agents to act on-chain. Its AgentKit product lets developers give agents access to blockchain actions such as transfers, swaps, token launches and smart contract interactions. In February, Coinbase introduced Agentic Wallets, a wallet system designed specifically for AI agents. The company said the product supports autonomous spending, trading and API payments, with non-custodial wallets secured in trusted execution environments and connected to Coinbase's developer stack for authentication, telemetry and security monitoring. Coinbase echoed that vision in an April 1 developer newsletter, where it described a future in which AI agents could move across the internet with wallets of their own and transact using stablecoins, tokens and traditional payment methods. A Broader AI Strategy Is Taking Shape The latest test suggests Coinbase is moving toward a model where AI agents appear in both workplace communication and on-chain financial activity. Inside the company, that could mean agents taking on more advisory, support or operational roles through the same channels employees already use every day. Outside the company, Coinbase is also building the infrastructure that those agents could use to transact on-chain. The rollout is still early. Armstrong said Coinbase is starting with two agents, which suggests the deployment remains limited for now. But the broader direction is becoming clearer: Coinbase is testing AI agents inside the workplace while building tools for agents to operate on-chain.

Brian Armstrong Unveils Coinbase AI Virtual Teammates Pilot

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has launched a pilot program that brings AI "virtual teammates" into internal decision-making. The agents provide strategic feedback through Slack and email. The move shifts Coinbase from building AI-related infrastructure for others to testing those tools inside its own business, where employees already make plans, review documents, and shape decisions. At the center of the program are two primary AI agents. Coinbase integrated both into the communication tools that employees already use each day. As a result, the company placed AI directly inside routine discussions instead of keeping it separate from regular workflows. , called Fred, takes inspiration from Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam. It acts as a strategic assistant for employees. It helps with document analysis, supports business decisions, and assists with long-term planning. The second agent, called "Balaji," draws from former Coinbase executive Balaji Srinivasan. It focuses on innovation and experimentation. It questions assumptions and pushes new ideas, which Armstrong described as "creative chaos."