Virtuals' Jansen Teng: AI Agents Are Becoming Economic Players
Virtuals co-founder Jansen Teng sees AI agents evolving beyond tools into autonomous economic actors reshaping digital markets.
AI agents aren't just bots anymore. According to Jansen Teng, a key figure at Virtuals Protocol, these systems are crossing a threshold from simple automation into something far more consequential — entities capable of acting as independent economic participants in their own right. That's a big deal if you're watching where the next wave of crypto value flows.
Teng's argument centers on the idea that AI agents are developing the capacity to transact, negotiate, and generate value without constant human oversight. Think less "chatbot" and more "autonomous contractor" operating inside decentralized ecosystems. For traders, that signals a potential surge in demand for infrastructure tokens, agent-native platforms, and protocols built to support machine-to-machine economies.
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Virtuals Protocol has positioned itself at the center of this shift, building tools that let developers launch and monetize AI agents on-chain. Teng's vision isn't abstract — it's a direct bet that the agent economy becomes a primary driver of blockchain activity, not a niche use case. If he's right, the protocols enabling agent autonomy could become the picks-and-shovels play of this cycle.
The broader implication here is governance and trust. As AI agents gain economic agency, questions about accountability, counterparty risk, and regulatory attention become unavoidable. Teng's perspective pushes the conversation forward, but the market will ultimately price in whether autonomy is a feature or a liability in a space regulators are already eyeing hard.
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