CEO Brian Armstrong announced on Saturday that Coinbase is piloting artificial intelligence agents modeled after co-founder Fred Ehrsam and former CTO Balaji Srinivasan. These AI tools are designed to be integrated into workplace communications like Slack or email, functioning as digital teammates to provide employee feedback.
The Fred agent is developed to act as a strategic executive assistant, aiding employees in refining documents, strategies, and ideas, while the Balaji agent aims to inspire innovation and fresh perspectives. Armstrong shared this initiative on Twitter on April 18, 2026, highlighting that these agents are inspired by what he called ‘legendary former Coinbase employees’.
Both Ehrsam and Srinivasan were instrumental in Coinbase’s early growth phase. A Coinbase engineer, Travis Bloom, reported that using the Balaji agent helped him clearly define a new concept. Armstrong mentioned future plans to allow any employee at Coinbase to create other AI agents, noting these won’t necessarily be digital replicas of real people.
These executive AI assistants are part of Coinbase’s wider artificial intelligence strategy, which includes machine learning tools designed to predict user traffic and automatically adjust resources. In February, the company introduced Agentic Wallets that enable AI systems to manage funds, execute trades, and process on-chain transactions independently.
Coinbase is developing the x402 protocol for autonomous crypto payments without human input, aligning with its launch of x402 Bazaar in September—a stablecoin payment ecosystem for AI agents. Armstrong expressed his belief that Coinbase might soon have more AI agents than human employees.