AnswersPublished13 sources
The B2A Economy: Why a16z Says Businesses Must Win Over AI Agents
a16z’s B2A thesis is that companies should prepare for AI agents to choose products and spend on users’ behalf.
Published byEdited with GPT-6 LunaImages generated with GPT Image 2
Research answer
Key takeaways
- a16z’s B2A thesis is that companies should prepare for AI agents to choose products and spend on users’ behalf.
AI Prompt
openai.comCreate a landscape editorial hero image for this Studio Global article: What do Andreessen Horowitz partners Olivia Moore and Justine Moore argue in their November 11, 2026 a16z News essay “Welcome to the B2A Eco. Article summary: Olivia Moore and Justine Moore’s thesis is that businesses must move from keeping bots out to competing for AI agents’ business—the “B2A” economy—because agents are becoming intermediaries between users and the products . Topic tags: general, general web, user generated. Style: premium digital editorial illustration, source-backed research mood, clean composition, high detail, modern web publication hero. Use reference image context only for broad subject, composition, and topical grounding; do not copy the exact image. Avoid: logos, brand marks, copyrighted characters, real person likenesses, fake screenshots, UI text, readable text, watermarks, charts with fa
Andreessen Horowitz partners Olivia Moore and Justine Moore argue that businesses should prepare to sell not only to people, but also to the AI agents acting for them. Their “B2A” thesis is that as agents move from answering questions to completing tasks, they may increasingly influence which products people discover, buy, and subscribe to.1
16
The idea is a shift in how companies think about automated traffic: instead of treating every bot as a threat, businesses may need to make their products and services accessible to agents that can help users make decisions and take action. The evidence cited in the essay suggests this channel is growing. It does not, on its own, establish that AI agents are already the internet’s primary users.
The evidence behind a16z’s B2A thesis
The essay points to two kinds of signals: AI-influenced activity on online stores and growth in agentic browser traffic.
- Shopify: a16z says AI-driven traffic to Shopify stores grew eightfold year over year in the first quarter of 2026, while orders from AI-powered searches rose nearly thirteenfold.
25
- Agentic browsing: The essay reports that HUMAN Security observed an eightfold increase in agentic browser traffic between August and October. It says Meta’s Muse accounted for about 60% of activity, while OpenAI products together reached 30%.
These are notable growth figures, but they describe changes over time—not the share of all internet use, retail traffic, or purchases attributable to agents. The excerpts available for this account also do not give enough methodological detail to assess how the underlying traffic was classified or measured.
What “business-to-agent” could mean for companies
The strategic implication is that an agent may become an intermediary between a customer and a business. Rather than browsing a store or comparing services personally, a user could ask an agent to find an option, evaluate it, or complete a task. a16z’s argument is that businesses should anticipate agents influencing product choice, subscriptions, and spending on a user’s behalf.16
That makes the B2A idea useful as a planning lens: companies can ask whether agents can discover their offerings, understand the relevant product information, and complete the actions a customer authorizes. This is an implication of the thesis, not evidence that any particular company or technical approach will succeed.
The important caveat: growth is not dominance
The essay makes broader claims that AI agents account for most web traffic, produce more than half of newly published online articles, and generate most code pushed into production.1
25 Those should be understood as claims made by the authors. The growth figures cited above do not independently verify them: an eightfold increase in a category does not reveal its total share, and more AI-referred orders do not mean most orders come from AI.
The case for B2A is therefore strongest as a forecast about a developing channel, not as proof that the internet has already become agent-first. The cited figures point to rising AI-mediated activity; the material available here does not establish the scale of that activity relative to all web use or commerce.
Studio Global AI
Continue your research
This page includes a source-backed answer you can continue inside Studio Global.
People also ask
What is the short answer to "The B2A Economy: Why a16z Says Businesses Must Win Over AI Agents"?
a16z’s B2A thesis is that companies should prepare for AI agents to choose products and spend on users’ behalf.