Coinbase is testing artificial intelligence agents that can operate inside Slack and email, Chief Executive Brian Armstrong said, as the crypto exchange explores a bigger role for AI in day-to-day work.
In a post on X, Armstrong said the company is exploring how AI agents can move beyond basic assistance and take on more defined roles inside the company. He said the effort is starting with two agents, adding that employees will eventually be able to create agents for themselves or their teams.
Inside Coinbase’s AI Experiment
One of the agents is “Fred,” named after Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam and described by Armstrong as the company’s “strategic executive agent.” Fred is designed to help with strategy, priorities, documents, and concepts, giving employees a source of executive-style guidance.
The other is “Balaji,” modeled after former Coinbase Chief Technology Officer Balaji Srinivasan and described as an “agent of chaos & creativity.” Balaji is meant to challenge assumptions, test ideas, and push more unconventional, long-term thinking.
The labels suggest Coinbase is focusing on the development of AI tools with distinct roles and personalities rather than a single all-purpose assistant.
From Chatbots to Digital Teammates
Armstrong said he expects there will be more agents than human employees “at some point soon,” pointing to a broader ambition to integrate AI directly into day-to-day operations, with the agents experiment fitting into a wider push to build tools that function more like co-workers than software.
In August 2024, Coinbase kicked off its CDP AI Builder Grants Program, handing out five $3,000 grants to developers building AI bots with Coinbase MPC Wallets, an early sign it wanted AI agents to work with crypto rails.
That was followed in November 2024 by AgentKit, a developer toolkit for building AI agents that can use wallets and interact with blockchains, and the rollout of x402, a payments protocol meant to let apps, APIs, and AI agents send stablecoin payments over HTTP.
Coinbase has since added Agentic Wallets, which give AI agents the ability to hold funds, make payments, and trade tokens.
