AI will automate most retail purchases in the future, with blockchain used to finalize payments, Shark Tank co-host and venture capitalist Kevin O’Leary says.
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AI and blockchain will spark the “next revolution in business,” according to multimillionaire Kevin O’Leary, with AI being able to autonomously make retail purchases and using blockchain to take care of payments.
In a three-minute video to X Saturday, the Shark Tank co-host and venture capitalist said that blockchain will support an incoming wave of AI-driven transactions, handling everything from orders at Walmart and Target to burger shops and cafes:
“You simply talk to your phone and say, I want a tall, low-fat latte, please. I’m going to be there in 90 seconds. That’s it.”
“So what happens there is the AI analyzes where you are, looks at the geography of what retailer [is nearby] and determines that that’s the one, and then uses a blockchain to actually do a digital payment system for the tall low-fat latte,” explained O’Leary.
“It already knows who you are. So the retailer has your name on it when you walk in,” he added.
AI is about to collide with blockchain and change everything. Imagine ordering your coffee by voice, AI finds the café, and blockchain processes your payment instantly.
That’s the next revolution in business. Faster, smarter, fully on-chain. The question is: who builds it…
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv)
Mr. Wonderful is waiting to find a winning solution
However, O’Leary said he hasn’t yet found a solution that can handle simultaneously at a low cost.
He said current solutions like Ethereum can’t do it because they order transactions linearly, leading to delays and during peak traffic.
“It’s a long highway on a way to a toll road for authentication of the transaction, and when there’s too many going on the highway at the same time, they get stuck at the toll, they get jammed up.”
“So we don’t have the technology yet, with at least those… ones to do what I just described,” O’Leary added.
However, there are already solutions to the problem that O’Leary described, known as , which process transactions in a spider web-like structure rather than ordering them into single blocks.
Hedera and Nano are among the crypto solutions that use this architecture, though they have only captured a fraction of the user base seen on top chains like Ethereum and Solana.
O’Leary said he’s looking for the first project to achieve this at scale, adding: “This is a fantastic career because the Walmarts, the Targets, the burger guys need millions of transactions a day, all independent, all going through the tolls at the same time.”
Funnily, it was just last year that O’Leary people for spending $5.50 on coffees and $15 on sandwiches when they could make them at home for a fraction of the price.
Agentic AI is already helping people with daily tasks
is already assisting people with everyday tasks, from searching and ordering to reminding people of daily tasks.
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Speaking to Cointelegraph, Kyle Okamoto, the chief technology officer of decentralized infrastructure platform Aethir, said his wife built an agentic AI solution to remind her when to stock up on groceries.
“She just simply talks to her agent regularly and says, ‘hey, I’m out of milk,’ and it keeps track of that and then it ultimately says, ‘hey, you run out of milk every week to eight days. You haven’t told me yet, but we should probably just add milk to your shopping list.’”
Her agentic AI can categorize items across Target, Whole Foods and Amazon, and even tracks which products are on sale, Okamoto said. “Sometimes the kids’ yogurt is going to be a dollar cheaper at Target because of a sale compared to Whole Foods.
“She doesn’t want to keep checking all these sites for the entire list, so she has the agent do it and give her price alerts.”
Now all that’s needed is a blockchain solution that handles the payment side of things, according to O’Leary.
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