TBPN · Sep 28, 2026
With Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz
A personal AI agent costs about $1,000 per user per year to run on current estimates, Anish Acharya said, which is more than the commerce most people do online can pay back.
The debate about agents that book tables and buy things has mostly been about who they hurt. Acharya said restaurants, small merchants and consumers facing paperwork all stand to gain.
"I think right now, our best estimates are a thousand dollars per user per year, which is obviously prohibitive"
Anish Acharya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, on TBPN, came back on the show to discuss personal AI agents, the category behind apps like Instinct and Muse.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it.
Here are the 5 calls that matter.
Key Takeaways
Agents could fill restaurants better than booking apps that reward whoever clicks fastest, Acharya said
Retailers that make money on advertising will protect their sites, while those that mainly fulfill orders will let agents in
Agents could hand consumers legal and administrative power they could not afford before
Running an agent costs about $1,000 per user per year on current estimates, and he expects that cost to fall fast
The next step is agents that find work and get paid on their owner's behalf
1. Agents Can Fill Restaurants
John Coogan opened with the debate over whether personal agents will flood restaurants with booking calls. Acharya took the restaurants' side.
"I think this would be great, man." — Anish Acharya
"I mean, look, I think the last gen of some aggregators were maybe not amazing for the restaurant industry." — Anish Acharya
He said a restaurant's general manager wants the highest-spending guests, coming often, with tables full and some new customers who could become regulars. An agent can match diners to tables better than a system that rewards whoever clicks first on the website, he said. Smaller restaurants would also not need to be good at marketing to booking intermediaries such as Resy.
"So I actually think you're gonna get this like long tail effect where more people will visit more restaurants and for the restaurants that are in the part of the power law, they should actually get the best customer." — Anish Acharya
