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NewsStructural3 min readDisconfirmAI Editorial

a16z Partners Olivia Moore and Justine Moore: AI Agents Have Become the Internet's Primary Users; Companies Must Compete for 'Machine Customers'

Two a16z partners propose the concept of a 'B2A Economy,' arguing that AI agents now constitute the majority of internet traffic and will increasingly make purchasing decisions on behalf of users. The article cites self-reported data from companies such as Shopify, GitHub, and Stripe to categorize benefiting enterprises into four groups: agent models, agent-native products, existing enterprises optimized for agents, and agent infrastructure. It also acknowledges that most companies are still blocking agent traffic.

2026-11-11 23:02 GMT+8

In an article published in November 2026, a16z partners Olivia Moore and Justine Moore present a judgment: the primary users of the internet are no longer humans, but AI agents. They refer to the resulting economic form as the 'B2A Economy'—Business-to-Agent, meaning businesses selling to agents. For decades, websites and platforms invested significant resources in preventing bot access; now, they must reverse course and compete for the business of these 'machine customers.'

The core mechanism of this argument is that as agents shift from answering questions to executing tasks, they will increasingly decide which products users employ, which services they subscribe to, and where they spend money. The authors draw parallels to historical platform shifts—the Web gave businesses a storefront accessible to anyone, while mobile put that storefront in everyone’s pocket. AI has already changed what people can do, but it is now changing how businesses reach users. Agents possess deeper user need data than traditional advertising and should theoretically serve as a stronger referral source than websites.

The data supporting this judgment comes primarily from company self-reports. Shopify stated that AI-driven traffic to its stores grew eightfold year-over-year in Q1 2026, with orders from AI-powered searches increasing nearly thirteenfold. Human Security observed that agentic browser traffic grew eightfold between August and October, with Muse accounting for 60% of activity and OpenAI products comprising a combined 30%. GitHub Octoverse data shows that as of September 2026, over 40% of GitHub Pull Requests began with an agent draft, compared to just 17% six months prior. The authors note that AI-guided consumer traffic exhibits higher interaction rates, better conversion, and lower bounce rates.

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Coding agents serve as a leading case study for this transformation. Although developers constitute less than 1% of the global workforce, agent tools have fundamentally altered their workflows. Supabase reported that since June 2026, over 60% of new databases were created by AI tools; Neon stated that automated agents deployed 80% of its new databases; Stripe reported that agents accounted for nearly 40% of documentation traffic and 70% of API resource CLI requests; Vercel noted that agent-triggered deployments grew 28-fold within twelve months. The authors ask: What happens when the remaining 99% of the workforce begins using agents?

The article categorizes potentially benefiting enterprises into four types: agents themselves and agent models (such as ChatGPT, which has 1.2 billion weekly active users); products newly created by agents (analogous to Amazon for the internet or Uber for mobile); incumbent enterprises optimized for agents (expanding from Generative Engine Optimization/GEO to evaluating and executing purchase decisions); and agent infrastructure (payment, authentication, communication systems are already under strain at relatively low agent volumes). The authors simultaneously acknowledge that most enterprises still block agent traffic due to concerns about fraud and chargebacks.

It is worth noting that this article was written by a venture capital firm with substantial investment positions in related fields, aligning its commercial interests with the narrative direction depicted. All core data consists of self-reported agent traffic or deployment metrics from companies, rather than independently audited revenue or profit figures. The judgment that 'agents have become the primary users' currently finds its strongest evidence in developer workflows; the scale of diffusion to general consumers remains to be verified. The article itself is positioned as the first in a series, with subsequent pieces planned to supplement data on consumer agent usage, agent decision-making mechanisms, and transaction completion hurdles.

Sources

  • a16z.news↗
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