Billionaire Kevin O’Leary says AI and blockchain will spark the “next revolution in business”, with AI capable of autonomously making retail purchases and using blockchain to process payments.
In a three-minute video posted on X Saturday, the Shark Tank co-host and venture capitalist said blockchain will support the arrival of AI-driven transactions, processing everything from orders at Walmart and Target to burger joints and cafes.
“Just say into your phone, ‘I’d like a tall, low-fat latte, please.’ I’ll be there in 90 seconds. That’s it.”
“What happens there is that the AI analyzes your location, looks at the geography of (nearby) retailers, determines that it is that retailer, and uses blockchain to actually run a digital payment system for tall low-fat lattes,” O’Leary explained.
“Retailers already know who you are, so when you walk into the store, they’ll see your name,” he added.
AI is colliding with blockchain and changing everything. Imagine ordering a coffee with your voice, the AI finding the cafe, and the blockchain instantly processing your payment.
That’s the next revolution in business. Faster, smarter and completely on-chain. The question is who will build it… pic.twitter.com/IWyTgY2tga
— Kevin O’Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) October 19, 2025
Mr. Wonderful is waiting to find a winning solution
But O’Leary said he has yet to find a solution that can process millions of retail transactions simultaneously at a low cost.
He said current solutions like Ethereum can’t do that because they order transactions linearly, leading to delays and high fees during peak traffic times.
“It’s a long stretch of highway on the way to the toll road to authenticate transactions, but if too many people are on the highway at the same time, they get stuck at the toll plaza and get congested.”
“So we don’t have the technology, at least not yet, to do what we just described,” O’Leary added.
However, a solution to the problem O’Leary described already exists, known as a directed acyclic graph, which processes transactions in a web-like structure rather than ordering them into a single block.
Hedera and Nano are among the crypto solutions that use this architecture, but they have only captured a fraction of the user base seen on top chains such as Ethereum and Solana.
O’Leary said he was looking for the first project to accomplish this at scale, adding: “This is a great career because Walmart, Target and burger joints need millions of transactions a day, all independent, all going through the toll booth at the same time.”
Interestingly, it was only last year that Mr. O’Leary criticized people for spending $5.50 on a coffee and $15 on a sandwich when they could make coffee at home for a fraction of the price.
Agentic AI is already helping people with their daily tasks
Agentic AI is already helping people with their daily tasks, from searching and ordering to reminding them of daily tasks.
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Kyle Okamoto, chief technology officer at decentralized infrastructure platform Aethir, told Cointelegraph that he built an agent-based AI solution that reminds his wife when it’s time to stock up on groceries.
“She would just periodically tell the agent, ‘Hey, I’m out of milk,’ and the agent would track that and eventually say, ‘Hey, you’re out of milk every week to every eight days. You haven’t told me yet, but maybe you should add milk to your shopping list.'”
Okamoto said her agent AI can also categorize products and track which products are on sale across Target, Whole Foods and Amazon. “At Target, children’s yogurt can be $1 cheaper on sale compared to Whole Foods.
“She didn’t want to keep checking the entire listing on all these sites, so she had her agent check it and give her price alerts.”
According to O’Leary, all that is needed now is a blockchain solution to handle the payment side.
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