ARK CEO Cathie Wood: Watch Who the Agents Pay
ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood stated that to judge the next round of technology trends, investors should shift from tracking developer time to tracking which services AI agents are paying. She mentioned that discussions will increasingly focus on "follow the agents." This statement was made during a discussion at the Robinhood Summit in Houston.
She emphasized the transition of agents from answering questions to executing tasks autonomously. The market needs to observe which services agents choose, how transactions are completed, and where the funds flow. According to CoinDesk, she believes that the payment activities generated by agents may reflect real adoption more accurately than the product launches themselves.
ARK's report provided a timeline, indicating that the tasks handled by agents will extend from approximately 12 minutes at the beginning of 2025 to over 180 minutes by early 2026, driven by continuous improvements from companies like Anthropic. The nature of tasks is evolving from short conversations to independent operations lasting several hours.
ARK projects the outlook for AI-driven software spending to be between $3 trillion and $7 trillion, corresponding to a spending growth of 19% to 56%. Wood pointed out that OpenAI is moving towards agent-as-a-service without interfaces, resulting in higher reasoning costs per user. Monetization may shift from subscriptions to payment based on completed tasks.
In a report from September, BlackRock connected AI and digital assets, suggesting that agents will require machine-accessible payment systems. Each API call, data request, and computing power rental cannot wait for human approval each time. Stablecoins and blockchain are being discussed as the channels for these micro-payments. The contention lies in whether agent finance will move towards an open network or concentrate within a few banks, payment companies, and tech platforms.
The buyers are agents that autonomously place orders and the companies that fund them, while the sellers are data, computing power, and API services. This is a shift in metrics, not a new product launch. Funding is moving from human subscriptions to machine payments based on task completion. Services that can connect to agent wallets will benefit, while companies that rely solely on launch events and developer numbers to demonstrate adoption will face pressure. Wood also stated that by 2027, OpenAI, Anthropic, and NVIDIA will still be at the center of infrastructure competition, with constraints remaining in computing power, energy, capital, and model reliability.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Wood has long used developer time to judge platform success, applying this framework to mobile internet and public chains. The change in Houston reflects ARK's own timing shift: tasks are extending from 12 minutes to over 180 minutes, with agents beginning to independently complete tasks rather than just answering questions.
Paying per completed task shifts revenue from seat subscriptions to reasoning and tool usage. OpenAI's agent without interfaces raises the cost of reasoning per user, while Anthropic transforms long tasks into executable processes, and NVIDIA sells the computing power behind these calls. BlackRock addresses the payment layer: API, data, and computing power rentals need to be directly settled by machines, with stablecoins being considered as candidates.
The path resembles the advertising industry's shift from installation counts to paid conversions, and the cloud computing industry's transition from licensing to usage-based billing. The difference is that the payment entity shifts from humans to agents. The industry is moving from model releases to agent procurement; whoever secures the default payments for agents is closer to revenue than those who simply release products.
The essence is a transfer of pricing power. Developer time measures supply, while agent payments measure transactions. If the $3 trillion to $7 trillion software spending is settled based on task completion, interfaces, wallets, and computing power will simultaneously become revenue sources. Launch events can only demonstrate functionality, while payment records prove selection.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
- Developer time is supply; agent payments are transactions.
- As tasks extend, subscriptions become insufficient.
- Launch events prove existence; payments prove selection.