FinanceShareShare this articleCopy linkX (Twitter)LinkedInFacebookEmailBillions Network CEO: Big Tech Fears AI Agents Could Eliminate Ad Revenue

Evin McMullen’s perspective on AI agents impacting Google and Facebook was previously echoed by Charles Hoskinson and Stephanie Cohen.

By Olivier Acuna|Edited by Shaurya Malwa Jun 3, 2026, 6:51 a.m. 2 min readMake preferred on Evin McMullen from Billions Network indicated that major tech companies are exploring new advertising revenue strategies as AI agents gain prominence. (Olivier Acuna/CoinDesk)

Key Points:

  • Major technology and telecom companies are increasingly concerned that AI agents, which do not engage with visual advertisements, could threaten the display advertising model that has traditionally supported the internet.
  • As AI agents collect, summarize, and keep users within automated processes, traffic driven by non-humans is now surpassing human interaction, endangering established revenue and discovery systems on the web.
  • Billions Network, which provides cryptographic tools to over 9,000 corporate and government developers, is becoming a crucial on-chain infrastructure provider for accountable AI agents, with clients including TikTok, HSBC, and various Indian government initiatives.

The foundational financial and digital systems supporting the current internet architecture are facing a significant existential threat.

In an interview with CoinDesk at the Proof of Talk conference in Paris, Evin McMullen, the co-founder and CEO of Billions Network, stated that large tech firms and global telecommunications are urgently seeking solutions to the looming demise of their main revenue source: display advertising.

McMullen explained that as AI agents take over human-led semantic search, the conventional methods of monetizing user attention are collapsing.

"They are terrified—existentially threatened," McMullen candidly remarked, describing the reactions from media and telecom giants approaching her company. "AI agents lack eyes. They are not influenced by the visual embellishments surrounding the core information they seek. The focus is shifting from merely finding new places for display ads to a fundamental question of how discovery occurs. Are we fundamentally transforming the internet?"

At the Consensus event in Miami in 2026, Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, expressed similar sentiments, indicating that Big Tech is apprehensive about the rise of AI agents. “Companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook are frightened by the agentic revolution,” he stated, noting their substantial investments to counteract potential disruptions to their business models.

The emergence of AI agents allows software to extract information from web pages, summarize it, and retain users within a chatbot or automated workflow, rather than directing them back to the original site.

Furthermore, at Consensus Miami, Stephanie Cohen, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudflare, remarked that this transition is undermining the traditional internet business model, as non-human traffic now outstrips human engagement.

McMullen emphasized that the core issue facing the contemporary web is not merely the technical prowess of machine intelligence, but the glaring lack of programmatic accountability. She highlighted that over 51% of current online and on-chain activities are driven by unaccountable automated bots.

Scaling On-Chain Infrastructure to Legacy Systems

Billions Network has quietly established itself as the third-largest provider of on-chain agents online, following only Binance and Base. McMullen noted that the network's open-source cryptographic libraries are currently utilized by more than 9,000 corporate and sovereign developers around the globe.

In the corporate arena, Billions Network's technology is leveraged by platforms such as TikTok, the financial powerhouse HSBC, and the decentralized tracking protocol DeBank. Additionally, it partners with India’s Ministry of Labor to ensure credential access for national social security programs, along with a deployment with the Indian Railway system that safeguards the digital identities of over 1.2 million personnel.

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