Cathie Wood: Investors Should Start Focusing on Where AI Agents Are Allocating Their Capital

ARK Invest CEO Cathie Wood said that as AI Agents evolve from answering questions to performing tasks and making actual purchases on behalf of users, investors may soon need to shift from "tracking developers" to "tracking AI Agents" to monitor which software, services, and financial networks they choose. Wood told the Robinhood Summit, "We may increasingly talk about 'tracking agents'." She believes that if millions of AI Agents can independently choose which tools and services to use in the future, their actual activities could become a new metric for tracking tech demand and capital flows. This trend is also driving the development of "Agentic Finance." SharpLink Co-CEO and former BlackRock Digital Assets head Joseph Chalom said AI Agents need payment permissions that are controllable, revocable, and traceable. For example, a user could authorize an agent to spend up to $500 on hotel bookings, while retaining the ability to revoke permissions and view transaction history at any time. Chalom noted that open blockchains like Ethereum could serve as shared financial networks for AI Agents, applications, and enterprises, enabling AI Agents to complete payments without a single bank or tech company acting as an intermediary. BlackRock has previously stated that AI Agents may use stablecoins to pay for API calls, data, and computing power in the future. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong previously said Grok is already one of the main clients for "agent traders" on Coinbase, though he did not disclose specific trading data. Meanwhile, companies including Stripe, Visa, Google, and OpenAI are developing AI Agent payment solutions, accelerating competition between traditional payment networks and blockchains.