AI Agent Predictions for the Next Two Years

📝 this is what's keeping me up at night these days... (ai agents, openclaw etc) AI skills marketplaces will look more like app stores circa 2009 than saas marketplaces. ugly, fragmented, wildly lucrative, and full of one-person shops doing $5–10m quietly. the value of clean proprietary data will spike as generic data becomes fully commoditized by models. there will be a $1b+ company that is just a vertical agent pack for one industry that no one on X talks about. we're entering the era of "one-hour companies." idea at 9am, landing page at 9:15, product built by 9:45, first customer by 10. most will fail fast. but the sheer volume of experiments means we'll see more breakout companies in the next 2 years than the previous 20. we're about to see the first wave of AI agents hiring other AI agents. basically agents autonomously spinning up specialized agents for subtasks and shutting them down when the job's done. I think the "org chart" is about to look like a serverless function. agent colocation becomes a thing. companies will want their AI agents running physically close to their partners' agents for speed and security. we'll see agent-specific data centers where proximity to other agents' infrastructure is the selling point. digital real estate gets literal again. founder-market fit gets replaced by founder-agent fit. the best founders will be the ones who can orchestrate a fleet of agents toward a vision, the same way the best film directors get performances out of actors. it becomes a creative leadership skill. OpenClaw got 60k github stars in 72 hours. anthropic sent a trademark complaint. openai bought the creator. that sequence tells you everything about where power is shifting, from the labs to the builders to the community. the lobster won. someone is going to build a billion dollar business doing nothing but converting legacy SaaS companies to outcome-based pricing models. the entire software industry needs to reprice itself in the next 18 months and nobody knows how. most saas companies will realize too late that their product is just a collection of workflows that can be rewritten as skills.many die, but top saas companies get bigger in an ai age and basically pivot to agent companies the companies that use AI the LEAST in their customer-facing experience will charge the highest prices. "no AI involved" becomes a luxury positioning statement someone will build the operating system for agents inside enterprises - permissions, memory, audit logs, billing and it will be enormous. this is the most asymmetric window i’ve ever seen in business nostalgia becomes a premium product category. in a world drowning in AI-generated everything, anything genuinely handmade, slow, analog, and imperfect becomes luxury. vinyl already proved this. expect "human-made" certification labels on everything from furniture to software to legal documents. the agency model is dead and nobody's had the funeral yet. design agencies, marketing agencies, dev shops etc all selling labor arbitrage that AI just collapsed. the agencies that survive will sell taste, strategy, skills and move from hours. Some will be extremely big. I’m betting on this as i co-founded an 8 figure agency and we''ve built some of the biggest interfaces for tech companies, but now have moved into skills, agents etc (see LCA) The highest-margin startups of 2026 will be agent wrappers around vertical workflows. the most underpriced asset in the world right now is a niche audience of 5,000 engaged people. that used to be too small to monetize. now you can code with AI a custom app for them in a weekend and run the whole business with agents. micro-monopolies everywhere! the entire insurance industry is about to be repriced by AI agents that can assess risk in real time instead of using 30-year-old actuarial tables. the first AI-native insurance company will be 50 people and outperform carriers with 50,000. we're about to see "agent injection" become a bigger cybersecurity threat than phishing. when agents have system access and make autonomous decisions, poisoning their context window is the new attack vector. the security industry hasn't caught up just yet. the fastest path to wealth right now: find an industry that still runs on phone calls, faxes, and spreadsheets. build the AI-native version "ambient businesses" become a category. companies that run entirely in the background with zero daily human input like an agent monitors a market, identifies arbitrage, executes trades or purchases, fulfills orders, handles customer service. the founder checks in once a week. Dont think its crazy some of these will do 8 figures. the first mainstream "agent subscription box" is coming - a curated bundle of pre-configured agents for specific life stages/milestones/outcomes. example: just had a baby? here's your sleep tracking agent, pediatrician scheduling agent, and expense forecasting agent. $29/month. the "API economy" evolves into the "agent economy." instead of developers integrating APIs, agents will discover, evaluate, negotiate access to, and integrate with other agents' capabilities on the fly. the entire concept of a fixed tech stack is dissolving before our eyes. AI-native elder care is going to be one of the most impactful and profitable categories of the decade. 70 million boomers aging into care needs, chronic staffing shortages, and agents that can monitor health, manage medications, coordinate with doctors, and provide companionship 24/7. the person who builds this with empathy will change the world. Obsidian as a second brain + claude code to execute. I recorded a pod on this. Will post how to do it on Monday @startupideaspod . Game changer because it helps your LLM know you way more intimately. karaoke bars, escape rooms, and immersive experiences see a massive boom. when digital entertainment is infinite and AI-generated, the scarcity premium shifts entirely to things that require your physical body in a specific place with other humans. the experience economy isn't coming, i think it's already here and accelerating. the build in public movement evolves into build with your audience in public. founders will share their agent configurations, let their community vote on features in real time, and ship updates the same day. the line between creator, founder, and community leader fully dissolves. every vertical is about to get its own claws - an OpenClaw for sales, for legal, for healthcare, for logistics. each one built by one obsessed person who knows that industry cold. "slow software" becomes a thing. deliberately human-paced tools that refuse to automate everything. a writing app that won't autocomplete. a project manager that forces you to think before adding tasks. the counter-reaction to AI maximalism will have passionate adopters and real revenue. digital hygiene becomes really important like what your agent has access to, what it remembers, what permissions it holds and people start doing quarterly "agent cleanses" the way they do closet cleanouts. AI-native churches, therapy practices, and support groups will serve more people than their human-led equivalents within 5 years. because they're available at 3am on a tuesday when you actually need them. AI agents will start filing patents. when an agent autonomously designs a novel solution to an engineering problem, who owns the IP? current patent law requires a human inventor. this gets tested in court within 2 years and the ruling reshapes innovation incentives globally. an AI agent will write a bestselling book within 24 months. the controversy will be enormous. it will still sell a million copies. fork a business becomes as common as forking a repo. someone open-sources their entire business playbook — agent configs, pricing model, marketing templates, supplier contacts and hundreds of people launch local variations. franchise economics without the franchise fees. cold email dies. every inbox has an agent gatekeeper. the only way to reach someone is through warm intros or being so interesting their agent lets you through. relevance becomes the only deliverability metric. angel investing becomes something normal non tech retail people do when agents can find, evaluate, and manage micro-investments in vibe-coded startups automatically. i think the 1000 true fansthesis becomes 100 true fans. agents cut your costs so dramatically that 100 people paying you is a real business. the minimum viable audience shrinks again. holdcos become more of a thing. more common to have a suite of the last satisfying job is one where you make something with your hands that someone can hold. woodworking, ceramics, cooking, tattooing. demand for apprenticeships in physical crafts explodes. Engineers deal with the loss of identity of being a programmer because manual coding dies pretty much We’re about to witness the greatest inventions in health and medicine over the next 10 years thanks to AI agent-to-agent gossip becomes a real phenomenon. your purchasing agent tells other agents "that vendor's API was unreliable" and suddenly a company's reputation spreads through the agent network without a single human involved. the loneliest generation in history is about to become the most "accompanied." always-on AI companions that remember, adapt, and care will become the primary relationship for millions of people. this will be simultaneously heartbreaking/interesting and enormous as a market. i keep meeting people who are "waiting for things to settle down" before they start building. things are not settling down. this is the new normal. the chaos IS the opportunity and the window is shrinking every single day. i'll stop for now, the coffee was flowing so had to get this off my chest more ideas like this on ideabrowser.com i hope you get some sleep. if you're anything like me, you cant shut off your brain. i'm rooting for you. Greg http://x.com/i/article/20252610679709900…