CoinDesk
Big Tech and global telecom giants are "terrified — existentially threatened" by the rise of autonomous AI agents that don't respond to visual ads, according to Evin McMullen, co-founder and CEO of Billions Network. Speaking with CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, McMullen said media and telecom conglomerates are actively scrambling to confront a structural collapse of display advertising — the primary revenue engine that has funded the open web for two decades.
McMullen's warning was echoed at Consensus Miami 2026 by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, who said "Amazon, Google, Facebook, they're terrified of the agentic revolution" because their entire business models face disruption, and by Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen, who noted that non-human traffic has now exceeded human engagement online.
Why it matters
The shift is mechanical, not speculative: AI agents can scrape a webpage, summarize it, and keep the user inside a chatbot or automated workflow — meaning the source site never gets a human visit, and the ad impression never fires. More than 51% of current online and on-chain interactions are driven by unidentified, unaccountable automated bots, per McMullen. That is no longer a future scenario; it is the present-day traffic mix on a meaningful slice of the web.
The question McMullen put to the room — "Are we inverting the internet?" — is the right framing. If discovery migrates from search engines and link-clicks to agent-to-agent communication, the entire ad-supported publisher stack from SEO to programmatic bidding has to be rebuilt around non-human counterparties.
Market impact
Billions Network has positioned itself as on-chain plumbing for that rebuild. McMullen said the network supports the third-largest on-chain agent population on the internet, trailing only Binance and Base, with its open-source cryptographic libraries already in use by more than 9,000 corporate and sovereign developers.
Frequently asked questions
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What did Billions Network CEO Evin McMullen say about Big Tech and AI agents?
McMullen told CoinDesk at Proof of Talk in Paris that tech and telecom giants are "terrified — existentially threatened" by AI agents that don't respond to visual ads, warning that display advertising — the primary revenue engine of the open web — faces a structural collapse as agent-driven traffic replaces human…
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Why would AI agents threaten the display advertising business model?
AI agents can scrape a webpage, summarize it, and keep the user inside a chatbot or automated workflow, so the source site never receives a human visit and the ad impression never fires. McMullen cited data showing more than 51% of current online and on-chain interactions are driven by unidentified automated bots.
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Who else has warned about AI agents disrupting Big Tech's business model?
At Consensus Miami 2026, Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said "Amazon, Google, Facebook, they're terrified of the agentic revolution" because their business models face disruption. Cloudflare Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen said non-human traffic has now exceeded human engagement online.
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What does Billions Network do, and who uses it?
Billions Network provides on-chain infrastructure for accountable AI agents and supports the third-largest on-chain agent population on the internet, behind only Binance and Base, per CEO McMullen. Its open-source cryptographic libraries are used by 9,000+ corporate and sovereign developers, with named clients…
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What would signal that Big Tech is taking the AI agent threat seriously?
Watch for any of the major ad-dependent platforms — Google, Meta, Amazon — to publicly fund identity and accountability infrastructure for autonomous agents. That kind of capex commitment would mark the shift from conference talking point to balance-sheet priority.
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