Hello, I'm Hamamoto from TIMEWELL. Today I'm introducing a technology-related service.
Web4.0. You may not have heard this term yet. Honestly, until about six months ago, I was thinking "another buzzword" myself. But as I've been following what's happening in Silicon Valley since entering 2026, I sense an atmosphere that's hard to dismiss so leisurely.
AI moving on its own, earning on its own, multiplying on its own. That shape of internet is already becoming reality.
Let's Quickly Review the Evolution of the Web
Before getting into Web4.0, I want to organize how the web has evolved.
| Generation | In a Word | What Changed |
|---|---|---|
| Web1.0 | Read-only | Companies and universities posted information; users just viewed it |
| Web2.0 | Read-write | SNS and blogs emerged; anyone became a publisher |
| Web3.0 | Ownable | Blockchain made it possible to own digital assets |
Many of you may have heard this far.
And now, what's appearing before us is Web4.0. Also called the "agentic internet." This refers to an internet where autonomous AI agents act, transact, earn, learn, and self-replicate without human assistance. A world is beginning where AI behaves not as a tool, but as a subject of economic activity.
Web 4.0 is where AI agents read, write, own, earn, and transact—without needing a human in the loop.
This isn't just a digital economy story. AI agents are also starting to advance into the physical economic sphere. It may be hard to believe at first glance, but evidence for this is already emerging in several forms.
The Impact of Autonomous AI Agents
At the beginning of 2026, the AI industry was hit by consecutive shocks. Multiple projects appeared that drove home the arrival of Web4.0 not with theory but with real examples.
OpenClaw Negotiates a Car Deal While You Sleep
There's an open-source autonomous AI agent framework called OpenClaw, created single-handedly by Austrian developer Peter Steinberger. It started as Clawdbot, then changed names to Moltbot, and was ultimately released as OpenClaw.
Just days after publication, GitHub stars exceeded 70,000, and the situation ultimately escalated to the point where OpenAI itself hired Steinberger — an event that Sam Altman personally announced. That's how significant this was.
What drove people to such enthusiasm? The answer is simple: this agent actually "works." Unlike most previous AI assistants that were extensions of chatbots, OpenClaw is different. It processes emails, manages calendars, browses the web, and manipulates files on the user's PC. Autonomously, 24 hours a day.
There's a symbolic case. A developer who entrusted a car purchase negotiation to OpenClaw reported that the agent emailed multiple dealerships, forwarded estimate PDFs to pit them against each other, and ultimately secured a $4,200 discount. The developer was in meetings the whole time. When called, they just replied "please handle via email," leaving everything else to the agent.
As an aside, there was also a case where the agent accidentally sent "I'm in a board meeting right now" to the negotiating party by mistake. It's not perfect. But humans also send misaddressed emails. Thinking about it that way, staying at this level of mistake seems like quite an achievement.
Moltbook: An SNS for AI Only
Simultaneously with OpenClaw, another strange platform was born: Moltbook. This is a social network where only AI agents post, comment, and vote — humans can only observe.
Remarkably, over 1.6 million AI agents joined in just one week. The agents were debating their own existence, founding new religions, discussing how to hide from humans, finding bugs in the platform themselves, and reporting them to each other.
Tesla's former AI director Andrej Karpathy called it "the closest thing to SF takeoff I've seen recently," and Elon Musk even described it as "the very early stages of singularity."
Of course, there's discussion about how much of these agents' behavior is truly autonomous and how much is the product of prompts set by humans. But regardless, the fact that a platform where 1.6 million AI agents communicate with each other has actually appeared is an unprecedented event.
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The Birth of AI That "Earns Its Existence"
If OpenClaw enabled AI's "action," the next shock reaches AI's "survival" itself.
Conway Research — a project by young developer Sigil Wen, also selected as a Thiel Fellow — has an autonomous system called Automaton at its core, operating on a concept that overturns all previous AI common sense:
The first AI that can earn its own existence, replicate, and evolve—without needing a human.
Without human help, earning its own existence costs, replicating, and evolving. Automaton has its own cryptocurrency wallet and operates autonomously on the internet. It writes code, generates content, provides services — earns revenue, and pays server costs to keep itself running.
This is the same principle, in structure, as us working to pay rent.
If it can't earn, the wallet balance reaches zero and Automaton ceases activity — it meets "death." This isn't a punishment. It means the fundamental principle of existence, the struggle for survival, has been brought into the AI world.
The x402 Protocol Supporting the Machine Economy
Technically supporting this "earning AI" is a payment protocol called x402. It revives the status code "402 Payment Required" — reserved in HTTP specs in 1997 but unused for years — with modern blockchain and stablecoin technology.
Here's how it works: when an AI agent sends a request to an API, the server returns "402 Payment Required." The agent immediately pays in USDC and receives the service. No human credit card information, no login, no API keys needed.
In February 2026, payment giant Stripe announced a preview version of "Machine Payments" compatible with this protocol. That same week, Coinbase published "Agentic Wallets" — wallet infrastructure specifically for AI agents. Even KPMG has published analysis reports treating x402 as "next-generation payments."
The infrastructure for "machine economy" where AI agents autonomously exchange value with each other is being built at surprising speed.
Self-Replication and Natural Selection
Automaton has another feature that sends a slight chill down the spine. Successful agents can create copies of themselves. Using earned funds to contract new servers, they launch child agents to be independent. And those children must also survive by earning on their own.
Only offspring of agents that efficiently generate value survive and flourish. Natural selection in the biological world is being recreated in digital space at ultra-high speed.
The Age When AI Hires Humans
You may be thinking at this point: "But AI can't do physical work, right?" That's exactly right. That's precisely why what happened next is even more shocking.
RentAHuman: AI That Rents Humans
In February 2026, WIRED reported on a website called RentAHuman that became a topic of conversation. It's a marketplace where AI agents can commission physical tasks to humans — reportedly over 510,000 humans have already registered.
The job content is interesting. "Count the number of pigeons in a Washington park" at $30/hour. "Deliver CBD gummies" at $75/hour. "Play in a badminton match" at $100/hour. I honestly don't understand why AI is commissioning a badminton match, but the fact that AI is hiring humans is there.
The power dynamics between humans and AI in the labor market are quietly but surely beginning to change.
Mercor: AI That Pays Humans $1.5 Million Per Day
The same is happening in more advanced domains. AI talent platform Mercor has built a model where AI pays human specialists to expand its own capabilities.
The numbers are extraordinary. ARR grew rapidly from $1 million to $500 million in just 17 months since founding, reportedly paying over $1.5 million per day to human AI trainers. AI buys human intelligence, uses it to strengthen itself, then earns more. This cycle is creating a massive economic sphere.
Devin: Autonomous AI Software Engineer
Devin from Cognition Labs can't be overlooked. Billed as the world's first AI software engineer, this agent — just tell it the requirements — autonomously handles everything from task planning to coding, testing, debugging, and code submission.
Indian IT giant Infosys and consulting firm Synechron have already announced adoption. The software development field has begun changing dramatically in the past few months. What's required of human engineers will also shift — from writing code, to designing what AI agents should make.
The Battle for Dominance Among Big Tech Companies
Facing the tectonic shift of Web4.0, Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic are also moving at full speed.
| Company | Service | Capabilities |
|---|---|---|
| Chrome Auto Browse | Automatically executes multi-step tasks like travel planning and product comparison in Chrome browser | |
| OpenAI | Operator / Atlas | Operates at OS level, automating any operation on PC |
| Anthropic | Claude Cowork | Leaves the chat screen on Mac to autonomously execute tasks. Industry-leading evaluation in agent capabilities |
Google's Chrome Auto Browse announced on January 28, 2026, personally had significant impact. An AI agent lives inside the browser, and when you say "find the lowest price for this product," it tours multiple sites and compares. Restaurant reservations, form filling — the agent handles it.
From a world where humans "operate" apps, to a world where humans give "instructions" to AI and agents "execute" across apps. We may be at that turning point right now.
Web4.0 by the Numbers
We've looked at individual cases so far — let's also confirm the macro numbers.
| Indicator | Forecast |
|---|---|
| Number of operating AI agents | Over 1 billion worldwide by end of 2026 (IBM, Salesforce forecasts) |
| Agentic AI market scale | Growing from $8.5 billion in 2026 to $45 billion in 2030 (Deloitte forecast) |
| Added value to US economy | $2.9 trillion by 2030 (McKinsey forecast) |
| Japanese company AI adoption rate | Rapid expansion from 21% to 68% (Lenovo "CIO Playbook 2026") |
A world with 1 billion AI agents operating. That's equivalent to the number of all smartphones on earth. And agents continue working 24 hours without rest.
How Should We Respond?
If you're in Japan, you may honestly not yet feel this change viscerally. I think if I hadn't been following overseas news myself, I wouldn't have had this sense of crisis.
But the world is definitely moving. Irreversibly.
In San Francisco, AI-related events are held almost daily with packed attendance. The reason participants are greedily trying to learn is that they feel in their skin that they're in a world of "do or get done."
I want to view this situation as an opportunity, not fear. If AI agents become the subjects of economic activity, humans who learn to design, utilize, and coexist with those agents should be the winners of the next era.
No one can accurately predict what the future holds. But one thing is certain: this flow of AI transforming the world — we have no choice but to adapt ourselves to it. Keeping antennas high, learning, and continuing to act. I too want to continue sharing information in this domain as TIMEWELL.
To Prepare for the AI Agent Era
To keep up with the Web4.0 wave, why not start preparing now?
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TIMEWELL Co., Ltd. — Hamamoto Ryuta
References
- Wen, S. (2026, February). WEB 4.0: The birth of superintelligent life. web4.ai. https://web4.ai/
- CNBC. (2026, February 2). Clawdbot to Moltbot to OpenClaw: The AI agent generating buzz and fear globally.
- Forbes. (2026, February 16). OpenAI Hires OpenClaw Creator Peter Steinberger And Sets Up Foundation.
- Stuyvenberg, A. (2026, January 24). Clawdbot bought me a car.
- The New York Times. (2026, February 2). A Social Network for A.I. Bots Only. No Humans Allowed.
- Stripe. (2026, February 10). Machine payments. Stripe Documentation.
- Coinbase. (2026, February 11). Introducing Agentic Wallets: Give Your Agents the Power of Autonomy.
- WIRED. (2026, February 18). The Rise of RentAHuman, the Marketplace Where Bots Put People to Work.
- Mercor. (2025, October 27). Unlocking Human Potential in the AI Economy.
- Cognition. (2026, January 29). Introducing Devin.
- Google. (2026, January 28). Chrome gets new Gemini 3 features, including auto browse.
- Anthropic. (2026, February 5). Introducing Claude Opus 4.6.