Aptos is developing infrastructure for autonomous agent commerce around x402, a payment protocol for machine-to-machine micropayments, and Agent Cloud, its GPU-rental platform with io.net. Agents can pay for API calls, data feeds and compute cycles in USDC, with transactions finalizing in under 50 milliseconds and fees below $0.0005. Since launching in May 2025, x402 has processed more than 100 million payments, with USDC accounting for over 99% of settlements. Aptos CEO and Co-Founder Avery Ching says agents require fast, inexpensive and programmable payments with spending limits and audit trails, while stablecoins provide the controls and transparency suited to enterprise deployments. Aptos’s stablecoin market capitalization is approximately $1.9 billion. Agent Cloud, launched around March 2026, allows AI agents to discover, negotiate for and rent GPU resources autonomously, with smart contracts (self-executing blockchain code) setting the terms and USDC handling payment. In May 2026, the Aptos Foundation and Aptos Labs committed $50 million to AI-agent tools and infrastructure, including support for Decibel’s on-chain order books and perpetuals (futures contracts without expiration) and Shelby’s decentralized storage products for agent workloads.