# Agent-scale web access needs a way to pay for content

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/agent-scale-web-access-needs-a-way-to-pay-for-content/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Parag Agrawal](https://realalpha.app/builders/parag-agrawal/) · Parag Agrawal is Founder of Parallel Web Systems. · Founded Parallel Web Systems, which builds agentic web search for AI agents; former Twitter CEO.
- Host: [Nakul Mandan](https://realalpha.app/people/nakul-mandan/) · Host, Knuckle Up with Nakul · General partner at Audacious Ventures; his show goes deep with founder CEOs on how they build.
- Show: Knuckle Up with Nakul
- Episode: [Ex-Twitter CEO's $2B bet on search for AI agents | Parag Agrawal (Founder of Parallel)](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/), Nov 10, 2026
- Moment: 51:41 to 58:53 of the episode (7 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/agent-scale-web-access-needs-a-way-to-pay-for-content/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3101

## Quote

> “and it made my output marginally better or more desirable, oh, I could have done that with **a dollar of compute**.”
> — [Parag Agrawal](https://realalpha.app/builders/parag-agrawal/) at [55:49](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3349) · Knuckle Up with Nakul

## Takeaways

1. Ads and per-seat subscriptions may not work for agent traffic.
2. Without incentives, content owners may close off the web.
3. Parallel prices content by its marginal value to an answer.

## About this segment

Parag Agrawal argues that agents threaten ad and per-seat subscription models, leaving publishers with less reason to keep content open. Parallel aims to price content by how much it improves an agent's output.

From “Ex-Twitter CEO's $2B bet on search for AI agents | Parag Agrawal (Founder of Parallel)”, Nov 10, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/)

## Transcript

From the transcript Knuckle Up with Nakul publishes with the episode.

[51:43](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3103) So I actually think it's perhaps even more interesting to talk about like almost everyone on the web and their incentives. So there is a real risk, right? Like the web, the open web, including many of these large players are built on a few business models, right? Like what are the business models on the web? Your ads. You have subscriptions by the seat per human. You have e-commerce and transactions, which could be for digital goods or physical goods, right?

[52:13](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3133) And then around transactions, you have like a mini affiliate economy or a payment economy or a economy around sort of the payment flow, right? Like these are the core dominant business models. Now ads and subscriptions per human. It's very hard to imagine those surviving in their current form into a world that I imagine where agents are the primary consumers. Now, e-commerce, transactions, payment rails, perhaps even some affiliate stuff could survive and should, like, I imagine them surviving, right?

[52:50](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3170) Even there, there's a real problem around broad-wave matchmaking because Previously, you could have tolerated limiting your universe of what you would matchmake to based on committing to a merchant or something. But I think with the agents, that thing is going to get so efficient that you will exercise matchmaking and selection over the entire universe of availability. And so now we have

[53:16](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3196) to figure out how do we keep the web open? Because if we don't quickly Build a incentive for people to have their content available to agents. Invariably, it's going to shut down. You're like, oh, agents are stealing my stuff. I used to get paid by ads. I used to have people click through and buy subscriptions. Since people started using agents, anytime I put something out there for free, people steal it.

[53:47](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3227) I get nothing in return. Why should I keep doing this? That's going to, and it's a very natural question, right? And I think that's Part of what, I think the mission of the company is to keep the web open for agents, for everyone's agents and not just, and then, you know, you shut it down for everyone. And then you go to OpenAI or you go to Google or you go to some other large player and you're like, okay, I'll give it to your agents if you pay me a bunch of money.

[54:11](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3251) And they do. And some content owners for a moment get paid, but then they stress about like, okay, in two years, this business is, the agent business is going to 50x, 30x, whatever. They're not going to pay me 30x. But what's the incentive for them? I agree with everything you just said,

[54:31](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3271) but then there's a huge disincentive for LinkedIn, Amazon to go open, right? Yeah. And so how will that work out? We have built this thing called Index, where we have built a model to Price,

[54:49](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3289) every bit of content that an agent reads in terms of how much it helps the output. And I think that is now an interesting currency in town, right? You can usually for most places, you can say, okay, if I spent a little bit more compute on the problem, I could have gotten a marginally better answer. That's something we sort of intuitively now see in the data. We also believe it, right? Like, okay, if I use a Opus versus a sonnet or a haiku or an after versus a soul or a luna.

[55:23](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3323) I trust the results of the higher compute thing more because they empirically tend to get more things right and do them better, right? So now you're living in this world where when you do work and you produce output, you are saying, if I spent a little bit more money on this, I could have gotten a marginally better output. Now I can trade that saying, okay, if I had access to your data as I did this work and it made my output marginally better or more desirable, oh, I could have done that with a dollar of compute.

[55:59](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3359) So you added a dollar of marginal value. Why would I spend compute when I could have paid you 75 cents on the dollar to get that data, not used up the GPUs? And so there is A bunch of data we've collected around this. We've trained models around this. And we want to ultimately incentivize the creation of high quality content because models are not very useful if not given data and information, right?

[56:28](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3388) So you want them to have data. You want the people to have incentive to create the right and high quality data and make it accessible to everyone's agent. And you want to do it at scale.

[56:38](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3398) So this is almost like a new business, like advertising business model for the new internet. It's a version of, you can say,

[56:46](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3406) aspirationally AdSense in its early days is what we think we can and should build here. Because otherwise, like you're going to have to pay some large lab or something rent to access this data. And in the process, you lose and the content owner loses.

[57:04](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3424) What's been the reaction of the big guys to this? The Wald Gardens, I guess. I think it's in flight.

[57:12](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3432) We have, we've announced a collection of partnerships. We've not announced any partnerships with like a large Wald Garden as you would describe it. Um, But I think they feel and see the problem too. We've announced partnerships with some amazing partners. Like I think we have, we're working with like the Atlantic and Fortune. If you think of like news publishers who have built real businesses over, I don't know how long.

[57:37](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3457) We work with really interesting data providers to different verticals. Like you're a VC. So you'll understand we work with PitchBook and Tractions. These are datasets which would otherwise be, Like subscription by the seat. And we work with them to figure out like when their data with their authority and quality produces marginally improved quality. How do we make sure we pay them? And increasingly we are expanding to now a lot, lot more of these content partners.

[58:15](https://realalpha.app/v/RfepEDxD0Lo/?t=3495) But our ultimate goal is to have a super scalable business model that Not just makes these businesses survive, but thrive with real participation in the agentic economy. And again, that only happens if the first premise I've started with, which is agents will use the web 1000x more. So when you grow the pie a lot, you can use incentive alignment mechanics like the ones I'm proposing to actually incentivize everyone to collaborate.