Armstrong is pointing to the need to establish agent identities and the potential of agent marketplaces.
AI agents are a mega-trend in tech that we've been tracking from a few different angles. To catch you up: AI agents are another evolution beyond copilots, tackling complex tasks/workflows independently.
Here are 3 predictions from us (and links out to research so you can dig deeper into each) for the future of agents:
- Building agent trust/identity is a key market opportunity, from the authentication/security layer to evaluation and other reliability techniques. This will enable agents to tackle more complex workflows and higher-stakes tasks, like making payments.
- More complex levels of agent interaction will transform the software landscape — think specialized agents that work together. This is driving activity at the infrastructure layer of the AI agent stack around orchestration, multi-agent frameworks, and more.
- AI agent marketplaces will emerge featuring dynamic agent “subcontracting” based on specialization, latency requirements, budget, specific integration capabilities, and more. (In the follow-up to Armstrong’s tweet, HubSpot CTO Dharmesh Shah said he was building this.)
Agents are all that
Earlier this week, Boosted.ai — which develops an AI agent for automating investment management workflows — raised a Series C round.
Participating investors included funds managed by Fidelity Investments Canada ULC and Royal Bank of Canada.
This startup’s been on our radar too — just last month, we announced Boosted.ai as a winner of the Fintech 100 (our list of the most promising fintech startups in the world).
