Cathie Wood says smart investors need to start watching where AI agents spend money

Cathie Wood suggested at a panel in Houston that investors should begin "following the agents" as artificial intelligence systems grow from tools that answer questions into software that can take actions and spend money on users' behalf. The comment was part of a broader discussion about AI, private markets and technology investing and highlights emerging questions over the financial plumbing that will support autonomous agents.

Industry voices say the critical issue is not just whether agents can make payments but who controls the systems that enable those payments. Joseph Chalom, co-CEO of SharpLink and former head of digital assets at BlackRock, has argued that agentic finance should avoid centralization under a few banks or tech platforms. He has urged designs that let users limit an agent’s spending authority, revoke permissions, view transaction records and port agents including their identity and permissions between providers.

Proponents of open finance point to stablecoins and public blockchains as technical routes for agents to transact directly with services like data providers, APIs and computing platforms. BlackRock’s recent paper suggested that machine-to-machine commerce could create demand for payment rails optimized for software-driven microtransactions, and noted stablecoins’ continuous availability and blockchain protocols’ ability to route small payments between software services.

But crypto firms will face competition from established payments and technology companies. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said on X that Grok currently leads as a client for agentic traders on Coinbase, and firms including Stripe, Visa, Google and OpenAI are developing systems to let agents make purchases. The outcome — whether agent payments are routed over open blockchains or through closed networks run by a handful of firms — could shape which companies and protocols gain traction as agents become more economically active.