Five AI Agent Predictions

I’ve interviewed over 30 AI founders and VCs who are investing in this market, attend events, host Llama Lounge events for the AI builders, and continue to research this market. I see significant changes coming to the internet, apps, and enterprise software in the coming years.

An AI Agent Forecast: Five Insights & Predictions

1. AI agents bring the internet to humans: 1) AI agents centralize information, handling internet tasks and purchases. 2) Content delivered in a multi-modal format humans choose.

2. Media and revenue models shift dramatically: Ads will be embedded into foundational models/Perplexity. Ecommerce integrates into FMs, and AI agents centralize commerce.

3. Traditional companies (big tech / corporate) respond to power loss: New buyer-side-AI agent APIs emerge, and seller-side AI agents launch to broker with the human-agents.

4. There will be more AI agents than humans: Every tech giant offers a persistent primary AI agent, and billions of task-specific AI agents emerge in vast agent marketplaces.

5. AI agents form a new type of economy and social norms: AI agents will interact autonomously, (trading, buying & selling) and evolve (learning, governing, & reproducing) with minimal human intervention.
   
   
   

For item 1: You can already see examples of this forming, people are already using Perplexity AI and ChatGPT and Claude to get answers instead of going to Google search. Item 2: Perplexity is testing ad-based models now for sponsored questions. Item 3: I’m often speaking to corporate execs at conferences, they understand what’s going to unfold but the tech isn’t ready for them to respond. Item 4: This forecast came from Div Garg of MultiOn, a leading AI Agent startups we invested in. Item 5: Several years ago, I spoke on this topic, it was hard for people imagine AI having independent communities. In a limited way, you can see these behaviors emerging in video games like Minecraft with NPCs.

I share the details at my in-person speeches: Join these amazing events

• Digital Ascendant, Palo Alto, Sept 23

• Agentic World, SF, Sept 24

• AI Agents Innovation Summit, Sept 25

• Ascendant Boot Camp, Sept 25

• Llama Lounge 13, SF, Sept 26

• AI Infra, SF, Sept 27

• Realized Summit, Oct 2 (JEREMIAH50 for discount)

• Llama Lounge 14, Oct 10

• TED AI, Oct 23 (TEDAI2024JEREMIAH for discount)

• Llama Lounge 15, Oct 28

• Techcrunch Disrupt, Oct 29 (llamadisrupt for discount)

• GenAI summit in Santa Clara Nov 1-3

• Venture Revolution, Nov 7

• Japan External Trade Org with Blitzscaling team, Tokyo, Nov 12-15

If you’re an AI Agent startup founder, I want to hear what you’re working on. I’m hosting private events for agent founders in the bay area.

Here’s how I see the market forming up after interviewing 3 dozen experts: Four major layers, 8-9 distinct categories, each with sub-species of AI agent startups and technology. I’m actively investing in multiple boxes.