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TBPN · 3 min · Oct 22, 2026

Agent traffic could force the internet to charge per request

Matthew Prince predicts agents will generate far more traffic than people, stressing internet infrastructure. He expects micropayments and agent-targeted ads to help pay for it.

Matthew Prince

Co-founder & CEO, Cloudflare

Co-founded Cloudflare, building one of the world's largest networks; also co-created Project Honey Pot.

  • John Coogan, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Co-founded Soylent and Lucy; OpenAI bought his show TBPN in April 2026.

  • Jordi Hays, Host · Co-host, TBPN

    Founded Branded Native; co-founded fintech Capital, which Rho bought.

About this segment

Matthew Prince predicts agents will generate far more traffic than people, stressing internet infrastructure. He expects micropayments and agent-targeted ads to help pay for it.

From “Matthew Prince on PHP2Shell, Duo on Arrival, 100 Really Difficult Phone Calls, Norwegian Gold Scheme”, Oct 22, 2026. Watch the full episode

Answers “What will AI look like in the next few years?” See all 35 answers

“if current trends continue in five years, automated traffic, agent traffic is going to be a thousand times human traffic.”
Matthew Princeat 25:12 · TBPN25:12

Takeaways

  1. Agent traffic could reach 1,000 times human traffic in five years.
  2. Agents can burden many websites while sending users to just one.
  3. Micropayments could charge agents tiny amounts for access to resources.

In this episode

Full episode

  1. 24:53Agent traffic could force the internet to charge per request2:47

  2. 48:40Robotic labs could bring drug optimization back to the U.S.7:53Up next
  3. 1:34:47Satellite navigation can address GPS jamming and accuracy gaps4:53
  4. 5 more moments in the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 24:58

    What is your most – a mutual friend of ours texted me a minute ago asking me to ask you, What is your most outlandish prediction for the internet in a decade? The business model is going to change fundamentally. So, you know, we're about to have this massive tragedy of the commons problem. So, you know, if current trends continue in five years, automated traffic, agent traffic is going to be a thousand times human traffic.

  2. 25:27

    Um, and, and to give you some sense, the internet almost collapsed when during COVID, uh, traffic doubled. So a thousand X, it's going to be, it's going to be, you know, somewhat there's, there's a lot more servers. There's a lot more routers. There's a lot more bandwidth that has to get provisioned in order for that, in order for that to work. And the question is, who's going to pay for it? Because if I, you know, go to my, um, you know, chat GPT agent right now and say, Hey, where should I have lunch?

  3. 25:52

    It might check a thousand different menus across a thousand different restaurants. And that's burning resources from all of those different places. And yet it only is going to send me to one of them. And so my hunch is that something's got to change in terms of how the Internet works. And my hunch is probably some version of micropayments that every time you access a resource, your agent pays, you know, a ten thousandth of a penny to be able to see the menu.

  4. 26:20

    And then there's probably some sort of a trade where if you are willing to tell the restaurant what it is that you're looking for, what your agent is doing, you're willing to reveal something, that that price goes down, maybe even is free. In some cases, the site might actually pay you to come visit it. But that will then lead to this kind of going to be the next version of advertising, which is how do you advertise to agents?

  5. 26:44

    If I know that an agent is coming to my travel site and they're specifically, you know, on behalf of their user looking for, you know, a Hawaiian vacation to a five-star resort, and I know that there's, you know, a five-star resort on Maui that has availability and a good price, like matching that together, I think, is going to be a resource. And that's going to be, I think, a big part of how we solve what is otherwise, you know, just in a massive tragedy, the commons problem.

  6. 27:12

    Because otherwise, like, why wouldn't your agent check literally every website on earth to come back and say, you know what, for lunch today, you should go to Wendy's. And that's not a good use of time. So I think that's going to be the most interesting thing to figure out. And I think the most interesting question, certainly in the next five years, I think we'll probably have to figure it out before the end of the decade, is what's going to be the future business model of the Internet.