Animoca Brands' Yat Siu on how agentic AI will reshape adland

Agentic AI has moved beyond the hype. Businesses are investing heavily, shifting from pilots to deployment in pursuit of returns. These systems don't just respond to customers; they learn and adapt in real time to deliver personalised interactions consumers expect.

One of the most notable moves in this space comes from Animoca Brands, which recently launched Minds, a US$10 million funding programme that supports early-stage teams building on the "Minds AI" agent platform.

Minds is an AI agent platform that lets anyone deploy and control their own always-on AI agents without needing to manage servers or hardware. Selected projects receive capital, platform credits, technical support, and access to Animoca's network of over 600 companies. 

In an exclusive interview with MARKETING-INTERACTIVE, Yat Siu (pictured), co-founder and executive chairman of Animoca Brands, revealed that Minds is more than just a personal AI agent. It is an ecosystem that the company is building to put AI agents in everyone's hands and encourage people to build on the platform.

Siu likened the Minds ecosystem to the Apple App Store, explaining that people who are building on it, whether it's an agent or a skill, are almost like developers creating a new app on the App Store.

Agents are essentially the new platforms, and the agents and skills being built on them are the new apps.

The Minds programme is designed to support impactful and innovative applications across any vertical, whether gaming, finance, productivity, or social, as long as they leverage Minds as a core product layer, according to Siu.

AI agents as enhancement not replacement

With agentic AI growing more capable by the day, worker anxiety is on the rise. A global survey by BCG GAMMA and Ipsos found that more than two-thirds of employees fear AI will lead to job losses, with the figure climbing to 76% among those already using the technology.

However, Siu saw it differently. He argued that agentic AI is not a threat but a tool for enhancement, comparing it to earlier waves of automation where machines gradually assumed routine functions. "Will you hire a person who doesn't use a computer? Would you hire someone who doesn't have an iPhone or another smartphone? The likelihood is probably zero."

The AI agent is a machine. It's just a machine that has intelligence that you need to manage.

Rather than replacing humans, Siu said AI agents offer a new opportunity for anyone to become a manager, a role many aspire to. "You can manage as many agents as you want. You don't have to do the minutiae of the work; the agent will do it. You just have to be good at managing that."

This will lead to an explosion of productivity, according to Siu. "We're already seeing it with AI systems today. With agents, it will be even bigger. There will be so much productivity and content that it will only accelerate. I actually think there will be more jobs, not fewer."

How AI agents will rewire marketing

For marketers looking to speak the language of AI agents and reach consumers through them, Siu offered a straightforward piece of advice: start by using one. "I don't think you can learn it. Learn it is the wrong framing," he said, comparing it to selling shoes without wearing them or entering a market without ever visiting it.

If you want to be agent-ready, you have to use an agent.

Pointing to his own experience, Siu noted that he now writes more code than ever — not because he learned to programme, but because his agents do the work. For marketers intimidated by platforms such as GitHub, he offered a simple starting point: "You tell your agent, 'Look at GitHub, explain it to me.'" From there, they begin to understand the ecosystem.

Siu emphasised that Minds is designed to lower the barrier to entry. "Within 60 seconds with an email, you can sign up with an agent," he said. "Just begin, sign up, see the experience, and I think you'll find it to be quite powerful.  And from there you can advance and develop and understand how to do it."

In terms of where marketing is heading, Siu believes the advertising economy, worth nearly a trillion dollars this year, will shift into what he calls an "invocation economy," a transaction-based model where users pay for content via their agents. While advertising will not disappear entirely, it will no longer be the primary growth driver. Siu described traditional ads as an "acceptable form of spam," an interruption that agents will eliminate by delivering a better, more personalised user experience.

For marketers, this means the old rules no longer apply. "If you want to get attention, you can't get attention by buying an ad. You have to get attention to make sure the agent in the future is going to get your content."

To do that, brands must be agent friendly, plugging into large language models (LLMs), setting up model context protocol (MCP) servers, and tokenising assets. Siu compared this shift to the early days of search engine optimisation (SEO), when companies that optimised for search became relevant. Today, it's not SEO, it's AEO (agent engine optimisation), said Siu.

If your agent can't find you, then you become irrelevant.

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