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Cathie Wood Says Follow The AI Agents. The Real Question Is What They Pay With

Cathie Wood says track where AI agents go next, but the more urgent question is what currency they carry and which companies control that rail before the volume becomes impossible to ignore.

By Chris Lange
Published October 7, 2026, 5:00pm ET · 3 min read

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A translucent white robot, positioned on the right, extends its arm and points towards a large, glowing light blue Bitcoin symbol in the center. The Bitcoin symbol is outlined with circuit board patterns. Surrounding the Bitcoin symbol and the robot are numerous interconnected glowing blue hexagonal icons, representing concepts like a gear, stacked coins, a bar chart, a laptop, a dollar sign, a chat bubble, and transaction arrows. The background is a dark blue, digitally blurred with faint lines forming a network.
A robotic figure gestures towards a glowing Bitcoin symbol, illustrating Cathie Wood's vision of 'following AI agents' in the evolving digital payment landscape. This visual underscores the article's exploration of what these agents will use for transactions. © mine95 / Shutterstock.com

At the Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD | HOOD Price Prediction) Summit in Houston, ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said: “We’re probably going to be talking more and more about ‘follow the agents.'” The line extends a rule Wood has used for years: follow the developers. Engineers move toward tools that work, showing adoption before revenue appears. Wood now applies the same logic to software that takes actions for users.

Our earlier coverage examined permissions for agent spending. This piece addresses the next question: what agents pay with, and which listed companies carry that money.

Open Rails Case: Coinbase Claims an Early Lead

CoinDesk reports that x402, from Coinbase, is designed to let machines pay for online services such as data or API access. Coinbase (NASDAQ:COIN) said in Q1 that 100M+ x402 payments had been processed and that 90%+ of onchain agentic commerce settled in USDC (CRYPTO:USDC). Its Q2 2026 earnings deck says Base carried 99%+ of agentic stablecoin transaction volumes.

BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) argued in a September paper that AI agents could pay for API calls, buy data from another service, or rent computing power without waiting for a person to approve each transaction. Joseph Chalom, formerly BlackRock’s head of digital assets, said: “A world full of intelligent agents means nothing if a handful of companies decide where your money can go.”

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong posted on X that “Grok is the leading client for agentic traders on Coinbase currently.” On the Q2 call he said, “I don’t think we have any specific numbers or forecasts to share on that at the moment.”

The core business is still struggling. Q2 revenue came in at $1.22B, down 18.5% YoY, missing expectations, and GAAP EPS of -$1.36 also missed expectations against a -$0.23 estimate. The stock is down 20.12% year to date and fell 2.75% today as cryptocurrencies sold off.

Incumbent Case: Visa and Google Already Own Checkout

CoinDesk reports that Stripe, Visa, Google and OpenAI are among the companies developing ways for agents to make purchases. Incumbents start with merchant relationships, fraud systems, regulatory standing and consumer trust. New networks have to build all four.

Visa (NYSE:V) processed 71.7B transactions (+10%) in fiscal Q3, and net revenue rose 14.4% to $11.63B. CEO Ryan McInerney said Visa “continued to enhance our Visa as a Service stack, including with agentic and stablecoin capabilities.” The stock is up 7.14% this year.

Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) builds the agents. Gemini models process 22 billion API tokens per minute, the Gemini App has 950 million monthly active users, and nearly 90% of the Fortune 100 use Gemini Enterprise. The company that builds the agent may be well placed to set its default wallet.

Portability Decides Who Keeps the Customer

Chalom argues that an agent should be able to carry its identity, financial credentials and permissions between providers the way a phone number moves between carriers. Portable credentials would shift value toward neutral settlement layers. Closed systems keep it with platforms.

Which Rail Wins Agent Money First?

Ultimately, the view is that incumbents win most consumer agent purchases over the next few years, and open networks win machine-to-machine micropayments, a smaller share with uncertain growth. Coinbase mentions an industry forecast that AI agentic finance agents will process $3-5T of transactions by 2030. Neither side has published dollar figures yet.

If Coinbase’s next earnings report includes a dollar figure for x402 volume or agent-driven revenue, the open-rails case has hard evidence behind it. If another quarter goes by with only market-share percentages while Visa or Google start reporting agentic transaction metrics, the incumbents are pulling ahead.

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Chris Lange

Chris Lange is a financial and geopolitical writer with more than a decade of experience covering a myriad of topics. He has published thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St., with past coverage focused heavily on stocks, IPOs, healthcare, defense, global affairs, and technology.

His work has been quoted, or referenced by a number of outlets including Business Insider, USA Today, Yahoo Finance, MSN, The Motley Fool, and many other publications. A graduate of Southwestern University, he studied business with a focus on investments and has previous experience in banking and startups.

When not reading or writing the news, he is following his passion for Lacrosse, playing chess, or building solar projects with his dad.

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