I made a video about this and a ton of you commented "internet" for the breakdown. Here it is.
Quick context on me: I'm an AI-native marketer with zero coding background. I'm not a developer, and I'm not going to pretend the agent internet is simple plumbing only engineers can touch. It's not. The whole reason this is the opportunity of the decade is that the people who understand it this year will look like geniuses in three.
You don't need to build the rails. You need to see the shift before everyone else and move. So this isn't a textbook. It's a map: four phases, one great resource per phase, and the exact first moves to make. Work through it once and you'll understand the new internet better than 99% of business owners.
Let's go.
The big idea
The One Idea That Makes This Click
The old web was humans searching, reading, comparing, clicking, and buying. Your beautiful website existed to win a person's attention.
The new web is agents discovering, evaluating, paying, and renewing. The customer isn't a person anymore. It's the AI working on a person's behalf.
Here's the line to tattoo on your brain:
A human customer wants persuasion. An agent customer wants structured capability, permission, and trust.
Your slick landing page, your clever headline, your hero video? An agent doesn't care. It reads your data, checks whether it can actually do something with you (book, buy, return, schedule), confirms it can trust you, and moves on. If it can't understand you or act on your site, you're invisible to it. Not low-ranked. Invisible.
That single reframe is the whole game. Keep it in your head for all four phases.
Phase 1
Understand the New Internet
Goal: actually believe this is real, with numbers, so you act instead of waiting.
Most people hear "AI agents are the new customer" and file it under sci-fi. Then they see the data and go quiet.
Bots already make up 51% of all internet traffic (Imperva's 2025 report). That's the first time in history machines outnumber humans online. Not a prediction. Right now.
Agentic traffic specifically jumped 1,300% from January to August 2025 (HUMAN Security). It's not creeping, it's compounding. AI traffic to retail sites is up 4,700% year over year (Adobe), and 23% of Americans bought something through AI in the past month (Morgan Stanley).
Morgan Stanley projects agent shoppers will drive $190 to $385 billion in U.S. online spending by 2030. That's the "$100 billion up for grabs" idea, sourced and then some.
The video that started this is the single best primer on why this shift matters and where the money is. Watch it first.
📺 Watch · Greg Isenberg
The Next $100B Market: Selling to AI Agents
The video this whole roadmap is built on. The agent-first internet in 14 minutes, cleaner than anyone.
Do this now
Open ChatGPT or Perplexity and ask it to research and recommend a business in your industry. Watch how it decides. That behavior, multiplied by billions, is the new internet. You just met your new customer.
Phase 2
AEO: The New SEO
Goal: get recommended by the AI, not just ranked by Google.
For 20 years the game was SEO: rank high so humans click you. That game is dying in real time.
Gartner expects traditional search volume to drop 25% by 2026. Google's AI Overviews are already linked to a 25% drop in publisher referral traffic (Digiday). People get the answer and never click. McKinsey projects $750 billion in U.S. revenue will flow through AI search by 2028, with around half of consumers already using it to make buying decisions.
The new game is AEO: Answer Engine Optimization. Instead of optimizing to rank for a human, you optimize to be the answer an AI cites, trusts, and recommends. When someone asks ChatGPT "what's the best [your thing]," you want to be the name it says.
The good news: a lot of AEO is stuff you can actually control. Clear answers to real questions. Structured content. Getting mentioned in the places AI trusts. This is the best practical breakdown I've found, from the founder of an SEO company that does this for a living, not a hype channel.
📺 Watch · Lenny's Podcast (Ethan Smith, Graphite)
The Ultimate Guide to AEO: How to Get ChatGPT to Recommend Your Product
Exactly how to show up as the answer inside ChatGPT and Perplexity. Tactical, credible, no fluff.
Do this now
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity "what do you know about [your business or your name]?" Whatever it says, or doesn't, is your starting line. That's your AEO audit in 30 seconds.
Phase 3
Build the Actions
Goal: let an agent actually do something on your site, not just read it.
Here's a stat that should change how you think about your website: agents already spend 87% of their visits on product pages, but only 2.2% ever reach a cart or checkout (HUMAN Security). They show up ready to act and hit a wall, because your site was built for a human to click through, not for an agent to transact.
So the shift is: stop building things only humans can use, start building things an agent can invoke. Instead of a contact form, an action the agent can call. Instead of support docs, executable support where the agent does the refund, the return, the reschedule. Instead of a landing page full of slogans, a clear statement of what an agent can actually do with you.
The technology that makes this possible is called MCP (Model Context Protocol). Don't let the name scare you. MCP is just a standard way to give an AI a set of buttons it's allowed to push, like a universal adapter between an agent and your business. Anthropic (the company behind Claude) created it, and it's now the default standard everyone uses. This is the clearest explanation, straight from the source.
📺 Watch · Anthropic
The Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The people who invented MCP explain what it is and how to start. The plumbing of the agent internet, made simple.
Do this now
You don't have to build anything yet. Just go to a tool you use (Notion, Slack, Stripe, your help desk) and check if it has an MCP server or an "agent" integration. Most are racing to add one. Noticing who already has it tells you who gets it.
Phase 4
The Plumbing: Trust & Payments
Goal: understand how agents pay and prove who they are, because that's where the giants are betting.
An agent buying for you needs things a human never did: an identity (who is it acting for?), a wallet (what can it spend, who approves it?), and a receipt (what did it actually do?). Whoever builds that trust layer owns the agent economy, and the biggest names on earth already know it.
In 2025 alone: Mastercard launched Agent Pay and Visa launched Intelligent Commerce, both built to let agents pay safely. Google released AP2, an open payment standard backed by 60+ partners. And OpenAI and Stripe shipped Instant Checkout inside ChatGPT, so you can buy without leaving the chat.
And it's already moving real money: Adobe measured an 805% jump in AI traffic to retail on Black Friday 2025, and Salesforce says AI influenced $3 billion of Black Friday sales.
This Stripe walkthrough is the most concrete look at how agent payments actually work, from the company processing most of them.
📺 Watch · Stripe Developers
Implementing the Agentic Commerce Protocol with Stripe
How an agent securely pays a business. The closest thing to seeing the future of checkout.
Two more worth knowing by name: AgentMail gives agents their own email inbox (a YC-backed company solving the "where does the agent's mail go" problem), and Google's AP2 is the open payment standard to keep an eye on.
Do this now
Next time you're in ChatGPT, look for the buy and checkout features rolling out. Experiencing one agent purchase yourself makes the whole shift click.
The opportunity
Where the $100 Billion Actually Is
Greg's whole point: nearly every tool you use will get rebuilt for agents, and almost nobody is building those versions yet. It's 1999 again and the lots are unclaimed.
Here's the cheat code. Take any popular software or service and ask: what's the agent-native version of this? That question alone is a startup idea generator. A few he floated that anyone can run with:
Making businesses agent-ready (the new "I'll do your SEO," wide open)
Agent identity & permissions (proving who an agent works for)
Agent-readable docs & pricing pages as a service
MCP servers for whole categories (franchises, SaaS, local industries)
Agent support desks and audit trails
And the reason this is urgent: only 22% of businesses say they're actually ready for agents (Microsoft). The gap between "agents are here" and "businesses are ready" is the opportunity. You don't need to be technical to fill it. You need to be early and useful.
This week
Your First Week
You don't have to quit your job and build an MCP server. Here's how a normal person gets ahead starting today:
Watch Greg's video
Twenty minutes that reframe the next ten years.
Run your AEO audit
Ask ChatGPT and Perplexity what they know about you. Write down what's wrong or missing.
Make one thing AI-readable
Take your most important page and rewrite it to answer real questions clearly. That's AEO you can do this afternoon.
Find the agent feature
In one tool you already use. See who's building for this future.
Pick your lane
Getting found (AEO), building actions (MCP), or the money layer (payments)? Go one level deeper on the one that lit you up. Depth in one beats skimming all four.
That's it. You're now ahead of nearly everyone in your industry.
The Map at a Glance
1. Understand it — Agents are the new customer. The data's already here, not coming.
2. Get found (AEO) — Be the answer the AI recommends, not just a Google rank.
3. Build the actions (MCP) — Let agents do things on your site, not just read it.
4. The plumbing — Identity, wallets, and receipts. Where the giants are betting.
5. Pick your lane — Find the agent-native version of something and be early.
The internet is switching customers. Almost nobody's ready. That's not a threat. That's the best news you'll hear all year, if you start now.
— Zach
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