Amazon drops data center NDAs, and AI agents want your credit card

This week's Equity podcast from TechCrunch paired two trust problems. Amazon says it will stop using NDAs in data center deals with local governments. And a wave of startups is betting consumers will hand AI agents their inboxes, files and credit cards, if those agents can get websites to let them in.

The hosts discussed Tab, Underdog and Hark pitching privacy as their product, Ghost's $3,499 computer built to run agents around the clock, and United, Apple and Amazon putting up walls against outside agents. That is the consumer agent market in one sentence: big promises, deep access, and a lot of closed doors.

We like the direction. An agent that can find money in your inbox, book the flight and handle the dull errands is one of the more practical things AI could do for ordinary people. Startups competing on privacy rather than engagement is a healthy sign.

But the episode flags the catch we keep coming back to: the business model that could turn your agent into a salesperson. An assistant with your card and your email is only trustworthy if its incentives are yours. Once retailers or advertisers can pay to influence what it recommends, privacy branding will not mean much.

The access fight is the other wall. TechCrunch has reported Amazon blocking Meta's Muse agent from its retail site, Delta saying it has no integration letting outside agents book flights, and United pointing to terms that bar automated access without permission. Some blocks are deliberate; some are old anti-bot checks that cannot tell a helpful agent from a scraper. Either way, the user is stuck in the middle.

We expect this to be settled by standards and partnerships, not clever workarounds. Meta, Walmart, Stripe and others have started on an open standard for how agents talk to businesses. That is the right path. Agents that sneak past defenses will just teach websites to build higher walls.

The Equity crew was skeptical that Ghost's dedicated hardware goes mass market, and we share the doubt. The bigger question is not where the agent runs. It is whether people trust it with their money.

Personal AI agents such as Meta's Muse, Instinct and ChatGPT's Dots can take actions on users' behalf, like booking travel or ordering groceries. The episode also covered the White House's new Super Intelligence Force, Lambda's reported $4 billion raise and Uber's $2.3 billion deal for ezCater.