The API economy may soon grow by tens of millions of customers—here’s why

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First gradually, then all at once. That’s how the emerging field of “agentic commerce” is starting to feel. I wrote about agentic commerce, which describes the idea of AI agents carrying purses of digital money to spend on our behalf, barely a month ago. But a series of recent developments suggest this new frontier of shopping is snapping into place sooner than expected—and that it could be a lot bigger than we imagine.

I spoke with Sam Ragsdale, a former a16z guy, whose startup is building a service called AgentCash that helps AI agents pay for premium APIs and other data. He is not a crypto diehard but told me that blockchains, with their instant settlement and tiny per-transaction costs, are the obvious technology to facilitate mass micro-payments.