Two digital workers named after real people are now showing up in Coinbase employee inboxes and chat channels — and the company’s CEO thinks it’s just the beginning.
Agents with personality
Coinbase has deployed a pair of AI agents designed to assist staff with their daily work tasks, accessible directly through Slack and email.
One of them is called Fred, named after the company’s co-founder, Fred Ehrsam. Fred acts as a “strategic executive agent,” helping workers think through priorities and get feedback on decisions.
The other is Balaji – a nod to former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan – whose role is to push back against ideas and help employees think differently.
Both agents are live and are being tested across the organization.
CEO Brian Armstrong announced the move to X this weekend, describing the deployments as the first step in a much larger change.
According to Armstrong, the goal is to eventually make it easy for any employee to create their own agent – or create one for their team.
Coinbase is testing AI agents that appear in Slack/email at work, just like any human teammate. To start, we’re delivering two that are inspired by legendary former Coinbase employees, @FEhrsam And @balajis. (Who brutally trapped who in this match?)
Soon it will be easy… pic.twitter.com/1bxfh8Dg9q
–Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) April 18, 2026
More agents than employees
Armstrong went further than most leaders usually do when talking about AI in the workplace.
Reports indicate that he believes Coinbase could one day have more AI agents on its roster than human workers.
This prediction comes at a time when tech companies in the sector are reducing headcount while relying more on AI tools to fill gaps.
Coinbase has been moving in this direction for a while. Based on previous reports, Armstrong has set a goal of having AI write more than 50% of the company’s code.
Furthermore, the company has announced a desire to transform its workforce of more than 4,000 people into what it calls “AI-Natives”.
The two new agents are the most visible sign to date of this internal push which is taking shape in practice.
Crypto’s bet on AI transactions
The workplace deployment ties into a larger story unfolding in the crypto industry.
Armstrong publicly predicted that AI agents would transact online more often than humans in the near future.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire made a similar call earlier this year, saying billions of AI agents could move money on-chain within three to five years.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao described crypto as the natural currency for AI-driven transactions – those that happen without a credit card or human in the loop.
Coinbase has already built infrastructure to support this vision. The company launched a protocol called x402 last year, designed to handle payments made by AI agents over traditional crypto and financial rails.
With Fred and Balaji now living within the company’s own tools, Coinbase is testing the concept where it can monitor it most closely: from the inside.
Featured image from Pexels, chart from TradingView
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