Two AI agents modelled after ex-employees will assist Coinbase staff with work tasks, as the crypto exchange CEO predicts the platform will “have more agents than human employees” in the near future.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said his company has deployed two AI agents who show up in Slack and email at work, like any other human teammates. The first models are based on the personality and skills of the crypto exchange’s co-founder, Fred Ehrsam, and its former chief technology officer (CTO), Balaji Srinivasan.
The Fred agent will reportedly be responsible for strategic advice, helping employees set their priorities based on executive-level feedback. Meanwhile, Balaji’s main aim is to spark innovation and challenge Coinbase workers to think outside the box.
“Soon, it will be easy for any employee to spin up a new agent for themselves or their team. I suspect we will have more agents than human employees at some point soon,” believes Brian Armstrong
The move fits into the company’s overall vision that AI agents will soon transact onchain more than humans. Coinbase has earlier rolled out its x402 protocol to facilitate this transition with dedicated payment rails and create open standards for “agentic commerce.”
As for the AI agents substituting humans in certain roles, we increasingly see initiatives that move past simple automation of lower-rank personnel and towards making virtual copies of corporate executives. Just last week, Meta was reported to be developing an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg, who can advise on employees once the real CEO is unavailable or unwilling to communicate. This AI avatar should mimic Zuckerberg’s speech and behaviour patterns as well as take into account his strategic vision.
Meta is also supporting Armstrong’s AI substituting human employees claim with evidence, reportedly planning to lay off between 10% and 20% of its workforce, or around 8,000-15,000 employees. The first wave of layoffs is expected already this May.
Meanwhile, in some tech areas like coding, AI is actually creating jobs. Coinbase, among other firms, wants AI to automate more workflows so that more than 50% of the company’s code is expected to be written by AI soon. At the same time, the exchange’s employees in this segment are supposed to become AI-natives rather than given a slack altogether.
