ARK Invest: AI Agents Could Drive $8 Trillion Online by 2030

ARK Invest projects that artificial intelligence agents could enable $8 trillion in online consumer spending by 2030, according to its Big Ideas 2026 report. The firm forecasts agent-driven transactions would rise from about 2% of digital spending in 2025 to nearly 25% by 2030. ARK estimates AI-mediated consumer revenue would increase from roughly $20 billion today to nearly $900 billion by 2030, a compound annual growth rate of about 105%.

The report also forecasts shifts in search and advertising. ARK estimates AI-powered search traffic could grow from 10% of global search in 2025 to 65% by 2030 and states that AI-related search advertising is increasing at about a 50% annual rate. The firm says monetization of AI search could lag traffic growth by roughly two years.

Companies have begun building payment infrastructure to let AI agents transact automatically. On May 7, Amazon Web Services introduced AgentCore Payments, a service designed to let AI agents pay instantly for services such as APIs, web content, compute servers and other agents.

Brian Foster, head of infrastructure growth and strategy at Coinbase, wrote that “There will soon be more AI agents transacting than humans, and they need money that’s built for the internet – programmable, always on, and global. By bringing Coinbase’s stablecoin infrastructure and x402 into AWS AgentCore, we’re giving developers the full stack to build agents that move money at software speed, with the trust and compliance enterprises expect.”

Other firms announced similar products. The Solana Foundation and Google Cloud introduced Pay.sh, a marketplace intended to let AI agents complete stablecoin payments on the Solana network. Anchorage Digital launched Agentic Banking, a product aimed at providing banking services for autonomous agents. These offerings include stablecoin integrations and crypto-based payment rails for programmable, machine-to-machine transfers.

ARK links the rise of agent-enabled payments with expected changes in consumer behavior and digital advertising, noting agents could make or arrange purchases for users and that advertisers and platforms are preparing to monetize those interactions.

The report’s forecasts and the product launches this year reflect activity among cloud providers, crypto firms and financial technology companies to build infrastructure enabling AI agents to discover, purchase and pay for digital goods and services without human intervention.