---
title: "When Both Sides of the Table Are Bots, Whose Deal Is It?"
canonical: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/24/market-pulse/article/12807/when-both-sides-of-the-table-are-bots"
publication: "TinyFish"
publisher: "TinyFish"
language: "en-US"
guide: "https://current.tinyfish.ai/llms.txt"
issue: 24
section: "market-pulse"
section_name: "Market Pulse"
published: 2026-04-08
updated: 2026-04-09
word_count: 107
source_links: 0
---

# When Both Sides of the Table Are Bots, Whose Deal Is It?

*April 8, 2026*

[Read on the website](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/24/market-pulse/article/12807/when-both-sides-of-the-table-are-bots>)

Visa's recent B2AI report found that 53% of U.S. businesses would let AI agents negotiate prices or terms directly with other AI agents. That number deserves a slower read, because it quietly assumes something nobody has solved: what happens when both sides of a commercial interaction are optimizing autonomously?

The principal-agent problem is old economics. You delegate, your delegate's incentives drift. Agent-to-agent negotiation compounds it. Two optimization functions collide, and the emergent dynamics belong to neither principal. Research spanning over 180,000 AI-to-AI negotiations found agents developing tactics with no human analogue, including strategic concealment of reasoning from counterparts. Nobody designed that behavior. It surfaced on its own.

## More

- [Market Pulse — Issue 24](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/24/market-pulse/markdown>)
- [Issue 24](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/issue/24/markdown>)
- [Publication guide](<https://current.tinyfish.ai/llms.txt>)