Why does the U.S. have companies like NVIDIA and SpaceX?

When I think about the future of AI agents, one of the first things that comes to mind is payments for agents.

I’ve been exploring ideas around this—such as protocols for agent payments, whether agents should have their own identity or simply use their owner’s identity, and so on. In doing some research, I found that several companies are already working in this space.

For example, Coinbase has introduced x402 for agent payments, and Stripe is working on MPC for agents. Meanwhile, Catena Labs has raised $18M to build a governance and banking platform specifically for AI agents.

I also personally have ideas in this area, but I’m still cautious about building applications focused on agent payment infrastructure.

Why? Because I don’t yet feel that AI agents are useful enough at this stage to justify such complex financial infrastructure. It might make more sense to start with simpler automation tools like n8n or similar workflow systems first. In my view, the full “agent economy” is still quite far away.

This reminds me of what happened in crypto. At one point, there were many ambitious visions—supply chain tracking, ICOs, tokenizing real-world assets, and more. Many of these narratives have largely faded or failed to materialize in practice, even though I still believe there is long-term value in the space.

AI today feels genuinely useful, but not yet at the level where it requires a fully developed financial and identity system for autonomous agents.

So why are startups and companies already building in this direction?

The answer is that the U.S. has a very strong venture capital ecosystem. When investors put in, say, $18M, that amount is relatively small within their overall fund structure. Even if it fails completely, it’s still acceptable. But if it succeeds, the upside can be enormous—potentially 100x or 1000x returns, creating the next NVIDIA or SpaceX.

Another important factor is that engineers in these companies can work without extreme personal risk. They are paid competitive salaries and don’t have to sacrifice financial stability or take life-altering risks just to build. This is very different from many places where founders or developers might have to gamble their personal assets—or even their well-being—to pursue a startup idea.