Virtuals’ Jansen Teng says AI agents are evolving into autonomous economic actors

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.