Key Highlights
Mehta predicts the AI-powered customer experience market will grow from approximately $500 billion to $5 trillion by 2030 as autonomous agents take over sales, conversion, and upselling functions previously handled by humans.
Autonomous AI agents operating around the clock will need real-time payment infrastructure, and traditional banking systems cannot provide the always-on, programmable settlement rails that stablecoins offer natively.
Netomi recently closed a $110 million Series C round backed by Accenture Ventures and Adobe Ventures and is approaching unicorn valuation, as enterprise demand for AI-native customer service infrastructure accelerates.
Puneet Mehta, chief executive of AI customer experience platform Netomi, outlined on June 10 why the expansion of AI into customer-facing commercial roles represents a structural driver of stablecoin adoption. The argument centers on infrastructure: autonomous AI agents handling sales conversations, refunds, upsells, and service interactions at scale need financial rails capable of settling transactions instantly at any hour. Traditional bank systems, with their business-hour limitations, cut-off times, and intermediary requirements, are not built for agents that operate continuously without human oversight.
Mehta puts a $5 trillion figure on the market opportunity. The AI-driven customer experience sector currently stands at roughly $500 billion and is projected to reach that level by 2030 as enterprises deploy agents across functions that were previously entirely human-operated. Each interaction involving a financial exchange, whether a refund, a purchase, a loyalty credit, or a micropayment, becomes a potential use case for stablecoin-denominated settlement. Mehta frames AI and crypto as complementary infrastructure layers: AI generates the demand for real-time autonomous payments, while stablecoins provide the settlement mechanism that traditional banking cannot match.
The thesis aligns with broader projections for on-chain payment volume. Analysts tracking stablecoin flows have projected stablecoin transaction volumes reaching $719 trillion by 2035, with a substantial share expected to come from programmatic non-human transactions rather than manual transfers. Netomi's own trajectory reflects the speed of AI enterprise adoption: the company recently closed a $110 million Series C round backed by Accenture Ventures and Adobe Ventures and is approaching unicorn valuation, positioning itself at the intersection of AI deployment and crypto payment infrastructure at a moment when both industries are converging around the question of how autonomous agents handle money.
