Digital Assets Watch: Cathie Wood says smart investors need to start watching where AI agents spend money

Latest reporting indicates that cathie Wood has spent years telling participants to “follow the developers” when trying to figure out where technology is headed next.

Now the ARK Invest CEO thinks traders may need to follow something else: the agents.

“We’re probably going to be talking more and more about ‘follow the agents,’” Wood said during a panel at Robinhood’s Summit in Houston on Wednesday.

She was referring to AI agents, software that can carry out tasks on a person’s behalf rather than simply answering a question or generating text.

Wood's comment was brief, coming near the end of a wider discussion about AI, private markets and technology investing.

But it points to a question that is becoming more important as companies race to build AI agents: What happens when AI stops simply giving people answers and starts spending their money?

Developers have long helped show which technologies are gaining momentum because engineers tend to gravitate toward tools they find useful.

If millions of AI agents begin making their own choices about which software, services and networks to use, their activity could offer another way to see where demand is going.