Finance @getVGS. Dad. Prev @vertexventures @qatalystgroup @google @deloitte.
San Francisco
Joined April 2011
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If you were wondering how to take the essence of “slop” to the next level, wonder no more
Excited about our new Bee devices launching today. They turn your conversations into summaries, to-dos, and reminders, so the details are there when you need them.
Bee Frontier goes on your wrist or clips to your clothing, and Bee Eclipse snaps to the back of your phone to catch what you'd otherwise forget throughout your day, whether it's notes from a class you're taking, the details of a trip you're planning, or an idea that comes to you in the car.
They connect to Alexa+ and Amazon.com, so the things you mention are easy to find later. And you're always in control…one button turns it on or off, a light shows when it's on, audio is never stored, and only you can see your data.
Think folks are gonna find this really handy. aboutamazon.com/news/devices…
Simon Tiu retweeted
AI agents can now book the hotel and order the cleats, as long as they're allowed to pay.
That's set off the "wallet wars," with major players racing to connect to agents:
- Stripe's Link: 300M users
- Shopify's Shop Pay: 250M users
- PayPal: 400M+ users
How your agent pays matters. If a wallet pays the store with its own stand-in card, the purchase goes through, but your card rewards, purchase protections, and relationship with the store can get lost along the way.
Say your agent books a United flight on your airline credit card. If the wallet pays United with its own virtual card, the money moves, and your miles may never show up.
Agents also have to pick the right card for each purchase, and when one books the wrong hotel dates, someone has to make it right.
Where it's all headed: new open standards from Visa, Mastercard, and Amex.
"The best of all worlds is a future where my agent can use my credit card, without having my credit card."
Full piece from VGS's @terryangelos on the Wallet Wars: a16z.news/p/wallet-wars
Wallet Wars: Agents need payment credentials as they become the new UX for $7T in ecommerce. Enter the Wallet Wars and why the AOL-era of agentic commerce will give way to open standards.
Simon Tiu retweeted
How payments change in the age of Agentic Commerce:
- Agents will be the UX to $7T in ecommerce
- Credential vaults are now multi-player
- Stripe speedrunning payments is the AOL-era for agentic commerce but everyone will move to open standards
- Why @arampell is "under monetized" today and how his agent will spend more $$ on his cycling gear
The wallet wars are here.
Very Good Security chief strategy officer Terry Angelos joins a16z's Alex Rampell, his TrialPay co-founder from back in 2006 (TrialPay was later acquired by Visa), to discuss how agents are learning to spend money.
"Agents have all of a sudden become significantly more helpful and useful because they effectively have arms and legs, which are payment credentials."
VGS holds the payment credentials behind about 1/3 of all e-commerce, and now it's helping AI agents pay merchants. If you've bought anything online, there's a good chance VGS has already helped keep your card safe.
In the last three months, Terry says agents went from "spectators to actors." Once an agent has your payment credentials, it can book the piano teacher it previously could only find and recommend.
Now Stripe's Link, Shopify's Shop Pay, and PayPal are racing to connect to agents. It's all headed toward open standards from the card networks: agentic tokens that let an agent pay with your actual card.
VGS went from zero agentic tokens to a few million a week in three months.
0:55 From TrialPay to Visa to VGS
2:05 How VGS vaults 1/3 of e-commerce
6:05 Why big merchants use 3-5 processors
9:55 Why AI agents need a payment vault
12:15 Agents go from "spectators to actors"
13:40 The wallet wars, old and new
19:55 Walled gardens vs open standards
23:55 How agents can pay with your real card
26:40 Your saved card goes multiplayer
29:40 How do you trust an agent's purchase?
32:35 Who pays when your agent gets it wrong
35:40 Why Amazon blocks agents
39:50 What's overhyped and underhyped
43:35 When merchants get agents too
45:40 Why agents could break card rewards
47:00 VGS's eras: vault, updates, network
@terryangelos @arampell
Internet was the great equalizer except not really. For commerce you still have dynamic pricing, plenty of bias pay to play discovery, crazy attribution dynamics…. Etc
But an agent that can pay for things changes all of that. There is no reason you should ever pay anything more than the lowest possible price for something ever again. There is no reason you need to settle for unfavorable banking yields, weird broker fees, put up with stupid customer service delays.
Agents are the true equalizer
this is how you "go direct" -- bravo well done Holly @OpenAI
youtube.com/watch?v=fHEIw5Cc…
🎤🎤🎤
You can now just text DoorDash and let it order for you. It’s proactive, learns from your repeat orders, and helps you find the best deals and new spots.
Just tell it what you want without any extra setup. Ask it to reorder your usual, or add it to a group text to collect everyone’s orders. You can even send a photo of your fridge and it’ll tell you what ingredients you’re missing for a recipe you want to make and deliver the ingredients to your doorstep.
We believe agents are a new app paradigm and are building for that future at @AIatDoorDash, with a lot more to come. This feature is in beta in the US, would love for you to let us know what you think! Waitlist: doordash.com/text
we laughed that AI would just create endless paperclips. wouldn't that be insane, we said.
now I have 5 AI avatars running around my computer look and feel a lot like Clippy...
Simon Tiu retweeted
We are excited to announce that World Labs is joining @AMD.
The research and technical breakthroughs we have achieved since our founding in 2024 have given us a clear vision for AI’s potential to solve problems in the spatial and physical world.
Accelerating the future of spatial and physical intelligence requires scaling our efforts, scaling our reach, and getting closer to the hardware.
Simon Tiu retweeted
Instinct + Shopify
35% of our users use Instinct for personal shopping. Today, we’re partnering with @Shopify to bring product discovery, checkout and order updates into one conversation.
Shopping is a creative and personal experience. Your Instinct knows your sizes, the brands you like, and what you’ve bought, kept or returned. When you ask for something, Instinct understands the details that matter, from who a gift is for to when you need it to arrive.
Instinct can now search Shopify’s merchant network for products, and find live information on prices, sizes and availability. When you’re ready to buy, Instinct sets up your order with the store so you can check out with Shop Pay using your saved payment and shipping details.
Whether you’re searching for a thoughtful gift, researching big-ticket items, or restocking household essentials, the new experience helps you:
- Discover and compare products across brands, with up-to-date pricing and availability
- Check out with Shop Pay using your saved details
- Receive price-drop and back-in-stock notifications for your favorite items
- Stay on top of delivery updates and return-window reminders
- Access automatic discounts and promo codes tied to your Shop account
Simon Tiu retweeted
We are excited to announce we are partnering deeply with Muse to enable agentic checkout with Shop Pay on all Shopify stores, offering people an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse.
Ohhhh snap, we’re back
Opening access for developers to build Muse connectors. You bring the API -- Muse brings the agent, the browser, and the context of what the person actually wants. People reach your service just by asking for it, and their agent takes it from there.
New connectors are live today. Come build with us. muse.ai/platform
Simon Tiu retweeted
Great conversation at the @GoldmanSachs Americas Financial Technology Conference, where @getVGS CEO Chuck Yu joined a panel on the future of payments and commerce. 💳🤖🚀
One line that stuck with us:
"The last 12 months were about building all the payment infrastructure for agentic commerce. Now it's about how quickly the agents can connect to it."
As AI agents start transacting on behalf of consumers and businesses, the winners won't just be the ones who built the rails. The winners will be the ones who make it fastest and safest for agents to plug in.
Thanks to Goldman Sachs for the invite and to everyone who joined the discussion. 👏
#VGS #GoldmanSachs #AgenticCommerce #Payments #Fintech #AI
Simon Tiu retweeted
the main thing i was excited about launching this week will be next week instead, but imo worth the wait!
You think AI is on the verge of wiping out humanity? Dude have you actually tried booking a flight with an agent? You know that demo that every LLM company shows? Try that first, you’ll sound less stupid.
Agree
I'm just going to call it:
The fact we now have a routing intermediation layer on AI token usage means we'll soon see a 'regular' version where you pay full price, and a subsidized version where results on commercial prompts like ecommerce/travel are skewed slightly in exchange for cheaper token costs (or have outright 'sponsored' results that display separately).
AI-enabled consumer apps with weak monetization (compared to money-gusher enterprise usage) will opt for the sponsored token pipe to float their computation costs. The third-party AI ad exchange of the future will be injecting the 'sponsored' part of the subsidized results into the token stream, combined with an attribution loop around the sponsored AI result that credits the app layer for surfacing the result.
The commercials might even be a rev-share on the downstream monetization, much like referral agreements, combined with dynamic bidding from the merchant on agentic attention (based on human user history, managed in a GDPR-safe way, in which the app owns the user data and relationship).
Trillions.
