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  4. From Pixels to APIs: The Programmable Economy is the Agentic Economy
News
February 27, 2026
1 min read

From Pixels to APIs: The Programmable Economy is the Agentic Economy

Augusto Marietti
CEO & Co-Founder of Kong

The APIs that have been powering websites and apps created a massive market, but there are only up to 8 billion humans consuming them behind pixels. As LLMs are taking over the world — in the form of productized agents first — there will be 100X more machines than humans.

The internet built for agents will look very different.

Agents don't need to see, scroll, and click graphical interfaces. They can access the internet programmatically. Every company, before becoming an AI company, will become an API company. All around, above, and under us are APIs.

This new world will generate an amount of API and AI traffic (tokens) that we can't even comprehend now. Tokens will produce all software revenue in the future. We're already seeing it in our user base. The spike of traffic going through our API, Event, and AI Gateways is insane. We are starting to count in quadrillions. Hypervolumes.

There will be dozens of different new protocols for agents to talk to each other. Powered by programming interfaces, whether it's MCP, A2A, CLIs, or more. Nations will trade via APIs over stablecoins, agents will exchange labor via calls, machines are APIs, and APIs become machines.

The GUI Era will slowly fade. The Programmable Era will explode. The Age of AI Connectivity has just begun.

AI Connectivity

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Augusto Marietti
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