Personal AI Agents
Ravi@ravikiran
The idea
I believe AI is moving from answering questions to actually acting for us, booking, buying, handling errands on our behalf. So this basket owns the assistants people will trust with those jobs, the payment and checkout rails agents will buy through, and the security and identity layer that proves an agent really works for you, plus a smaller slice of the chips running it all. Agentic buying is still tiny today, so I'm spreading across layers, leaning on large steady companies, and keeping some cash on the side for a shift I expect to play out over years, not months.
What will be bought
- These companies own the AI helpers people will actually hand their errands to, and the devices and apps those helpers live in. · Alphabet Inc.Gemini sits on billions of Android phones and inside Search, putting an assistant where people already ask for things and can let it act on their behalf., Microsoft CorporationCopilot agents live inside the work tools millions of people already use daily, making it a natural place to hand real errands to an assistant., Meta Platforms, Inc.Meta can deploy consumer agents across WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger to reach billions of people, and the platform already hosts shopping and booking transactions from businesses., Apple Inc.The iPhone holds payment details, identity and the apps an agent needs to act, positioning Apple as a key platform for agent commerce if it opens its tools to agent actions., Amazon.com, Inc.Amazon has both an assistant in Alexa and the store where people buy the most online, letting it close the loop from asking to buying in one place.34%
- When an agent buys something, the money still moves through card networks and checkout platforms, which collect a fee either way. · Visa Inc.Agent purchases routed through card networks will likely settle over existing payment rails, and Visa processes the largest volume of card transactions globally., Shopify Inc.Shopify runs checkout for millions of online stores, so it is positioned to open the door for those stores to sell to agents., Mastercard IncorporatedMastercard is one of the two major card networks an agent would pay through, and it is building ways to confirm an agent is allowed to spend for a specific person., PayPal Holdings, Inc.PayPal is a wallet with a huge base of saved payment accounts, a smaller bet that agents will pay through stored wallets people already trust.23%
- Personal AI agents making purchases on behalf of owners need cryptographic proof of authorization, creating new demand for identity verification and fraud prevention. · Cloudflare, Inc.Cloudflare sits in front of a large share of websites and can tell a trusted agent from a scraper, deciding which bots get through., Okta, Inc.Okta handles logins and identity for companies, and every agent acting for a person needs a way to prove whose permission it has., CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc.Agents that can log in and spend money are a new target for attackers, and CrowdStrike is a leading company protecting the devices and accounts they run on., Palo Alto Networks, Inc.Palo Alto Networks sells security platforms big companies use to control what software and agents can reach inside their networks., GoDaddy Inc.GoDaddy manages domains for a huge number of small businesses and is working on ways for agents to verify they are dealing with a real business.23%
- Agents run far more AI work per task than a chatbot, so the chip makers win whichever assistant comes out on top. · NVIDIA CorporationEvery agent runs on AI chips, and Nvidia makes most of them, so more agents doing more work means more demand for its processors., Broadcom Inc.Broadcom designs custom AI chips for the biggest tech companies, a second way to own the compute agents run on as their use grows.10%
- Cash10%