The web was built for people. A tsunami of AI agents is changing that fast.

zhengshun tang/Getty Images AI agents are flooding the web, changing who, or what, uses the internet.

Businesses are racing to adapt as bots browse, shop, negotiate, and buy online.

The next battle online may be over which AI agents websites choose to let in.

I visited the CEO of a major startup in SF last week.

He recounted a tale that blew my mind.

His company recently put a new product online but hadn't done a big launch or any marketing.

Within a week or two, it got at least a million signups.

Barely any humans even knew about it.

This was all AI agents just finding this new tool and using it en masse.

This is the future of the internet, and it's arriving at warp speed.

Back in early 2025, I described a vision of a " dark internet " where humans will be drowned out by agents accessing and using online information, widgets, and tools all by themselves.

Silicon Valley got busy building the "rails" for this agentic web so that these autonomous software programs could act on our behalf, executing workflows, doing online chores, and even paying for things, all without us lifting a finger.

This took a couple of years, but the early foundations have been built and that's been enough to support a sudden surge in agent activity online, producing both stunning and worrying results.

Meta recently launched a personal agent called Muse, which got busy scouring the web and calling customer service on behalf of millions of users.