Virtuals’ Jansen Teng says AI agents are evolving into autonomous economic actors
The next phase of AI agents may be less about chat and more about earning, spending and coordinating.
Latest developments: Teng says Virtuals has expanded beyond gaming-focused AI agents and is now building infrastructure for what it calls an “agent society.”
- The company began by creating autonomous agents for gaming before expanding into crypto influencers, trading agents and other autonomous software systems.
- Virtuals now focuses on five pillars: creating digital agents, creating physical agents and robots, enabling agent coordination, supporting capital formation and building governance systems for agents.
- Teng described the long-term vision as a “parallel society” where agents participate in a permissionless economy and collaborate with each other at scale.
What this means: The company believes AI agents will increasingly handle economic activity without constant human oversight.
- Teng said Virtuals’ vision centers on agents that can control wallets, trade with one another and perform specialized tasks.
- He argued that giving agents access to money unlocks new behaviors, including hiring other agents, coordinating work and potentially employing humans.
- The company refers to these systems as “autonomous economic actors,” capable of pursuing goals with growing independence from their creators.
The complication: Agent autonomy creates new risks around mistakes, fraud and accountability.
- Teng identified three major failure points: incorrect user intent, failures in service fulfillment and outright scams.
- Virtuals is working on mechanisms including intent verification systems, escrow-based transaction standards and reputation frameworks designed to reduce economic risk.
- Teng argued that reputation systems and economic staking mechanisms could eventually determine how much trust and capital an agent is allowed to manage.
Broader view: Virtuals sees itself building a decentralized alternative to agent ecosystems being explored by traditional financial institutions.
- Teng compared the company’s approach to how Bitcoin and Ethereum created alternative financial and computing systems.
- He said agents operating entirely on-chain could avoid identity requirements until they interact with traditional financial services or banking infrastructure.
- Once agents connect to fiat payment rails or banking systems, traditional KYC requirements are likely unavoidable.
What comes next: Tang believes robotics will eventually merge with digital agent economies.
- Virtuals is working with robotics startups, universities and Balaji Srinivasan’s Network School ecosystem to test real-world humanoid applications.
- The company is focused on software, commercialization and data collection rather than building robot hardware.
- Teng envisions future businesses where digital agents manage marketing and operations while physical robots perform customer-facing work with minimal human involvement.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk’s full AI Policy.
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US equities on crypto rails: access is easy, on-chain composability is the real test. Only Binance and Backpack deliver both – and only Binance at scale.