Coinbase, Cloudflare, Stripe Push to Shape Future of AI Money

Big names in crypto, payments and cloud infrastructure are racing to build the financial plumbing for a world in which AI agents — not humans — handle transactions on the internet.

Coinbase Global Inc., Cloudflare Inc. and Stripe are forming a nonprofit foundation to govern x402, an open-source protocol that lets software make instant payments without human involvement — one of at least two competing standards vying to become the default rails for machine-to-machine commerce.

An additional 20 companies are joining the foundation as members, including Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon Web Services, American Express Co. ...