How will 'your' AI agents make money?

If you wonder how AI agentic companies are likely to make money, you probably don’t need to look much further than how their web and app services forebears have been making their money over the past decade or two: on you.

Web and app services like Facebook, Google Search and Instagram are free to use because you, the user, are the product. They build services that capture your data and your attention (e.g., wish your friend “Happy Birthday!”) and then they sell your data and your attention to marketers, to ad-tech companies, to research companies — and, in many cases, to governments.

The models are purely parasitic.

Okay, so it’s now 2025, and AI agents are all the rage. You’re being inundated with offers to have any number of AI agents work for you, help you solve your problems — at home, personally, and in your business. Sounds great. What is there to lose?

Security issues

Yes, there are data security issues. Your IT folks are telling you not to use confidential or proprietary information in open large language models. But beyond that, why not take the amazing help AI agents offer? What could be the downside?

When it comes to business applications, there could be many potential downsides. Why should you expect AI agentic business models to be any different from what we’ve seen over the past 20 years of consumer web and app services, or what we’ve seen with any number of ad-tech providers?

Many of those companies will focus first on themselves. While ostensibly working for you, their agents are likely to be exploiting you as much or more than they are helping you.

For many people and many applications, that might be fine. Hundreds of millions of us keep using Facebook, even though we know what it’s doing. What’s key is to know what it’s doing.

So, when you wonder how ‘your’ AI agents are likely to make money, don’t forget that you’re the product. Selling you and your data is what pays their bills.

This story was first published by MediaPost.com and is republished with the permission of the author.

Dave Morgan, a lawyer by training, is the CEO and founder of Simulmedia. He previously founded and ran both TACODA, Inc, an online advertising company that pioneered behavioural online marketing and was acquired by AOL in 2007 for $275 million, and Real Media, Inc, one of the world’s first ad serving and online ad network companies and a predecessor to 24/7 Real Media (TFSM), which was later sold to WPP for $649 million. Follow him on Twitter @davemorgannyc