Chainlink Labs' head of institutional strategy, Andrew McCormick, expects AI agents and robots to become a growing source of blockchain activity as autonomous systems need ways to transact. He also expects blockchain networks to multiply as AI lowers the cost of building them, making cross-chain interoperability more important.
Andrew McCormick, Chainlink Labs' head of institutional strategy, said autonomous systems increasingly need ways to transact and communicate, pointing to AI agents and robots as a growing source of blockchain activity. Speaking with The Block's Kelvin Sparks at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026, McCormick said crypto infrastructure could support this shift toward agentic AI.
He also expects advances in AI to make blockchain development cheaper, supporting what he described as a future with many different networks. As a result, McCormick said interoperability would become increasingly important in that world of many chains. He pointed to Wyoming's Frontier Token, which uses Chainlink's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol to distribute across multiple blockchains.
McCormick, who joined Chainlink Labs in June after roles at eToro and Morgan Stanley, sees interoperability becoming increasingly important as chain creation gets easier and cheaper.
AI agents and robots as transacting parties
McCormick highlighted the trading potential of AI agents, arguing that autonomous systems could trade when their owners are unavailable and take advantage of tokenized markets beyond traditional market hours. However, he said the overlap between AI and crypto could also extend beyond software agents into physical machines, envisaging humanoid robots operating in docks and factories that communicate and transact using stablecoins, digital assets, and blockchains, among them stablecoins.
According to The Block: "There's a lot of Star Wars vibes, but it's happening," he said.
Source: The Block
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