Coinbase is leveraging the advancing AI technology to take tasks that were restricted to humans so far. In a fresh claim Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said 50 percent of the internal coding at the exchange has been taken over by AI agents – -a goal that was set by Armstrong last year that was expected to be achieved by October this year.
Armstrong sat for a conversation with podcaster David Serna over the weekend and spoke about a range of topics including the U.S. crypto market structure bill and the increasing trend of agentic AI payments.
Elaborating on the infusion of AI into the Coinbase ecosystem, Armstrong said the exchange is building its own AI tools for internal use and also working with multiple third-party vendors.
“We have a lot of custom models internally as well. We’re testing different use cases. For instance, around like compliance automation. We’re building a lot of stuff in house design totally you can really quickly, rapidly prototype stuff and get it out there,” the crypto mogul said.
Armstrong said in the foreseeable future AI agents will be treated as digital employees by corporates. To prepare for this future, he said, Coinbase is working on AI tools that will enable AI agents to initiate crypto transactions by themselves.
The crypto mogul essentially referred to the x402 tool, that allows agentic AI to process crypto transactions, that Coinbase developed last year.
“Thing that’s more unique to crypto is that these AI agents are increasingly needing to do payments to get work done, and we’re giving them all stablecoin wallets. They’re doing a lot of machine to machine payments. It’s all very new in the last few months, but it’s been getting a lot of traction. So that’s that’s pretty exciting,” Armstrong added.
At present, Coinbase is already working with stablecoin giant Circle and search engine mammoth Google to push AI-based payment protocol into mainstream usage.
Coinbase has been bullish on implementing AI into its operations since 2025. Armstrong had also come face to face with major flak when last November he had said that employees who refuse to get acquainted with AI are being fired from the exchange.
It was at the time when Armstrong had said that by October 2026, he expects AI to tackle 50 percent coding at the exchange — a goal that by his claim has been achieved much ahead of the due timeline.
About the ongoing negotiations on the crypto market structure bill or CLARITY Act in the U.S., Armstrong expressed optimism that once finalized and signed into law, it will give a concrete shape to the crypto industry in the U.S., the country that hosts the world’s largest capital market.