Fastly and Experian move AI agent authorization to the network edge

This partnership shifts the industry strategy from defensive bot blocking to proactive agent monetization. By moving identity checks to the edge, Fastly reduces the technical overhead of managing high-frequency automated commerce, which McKinsey projects could reach $1 trillion in U.S. revenue by 2030. For the streaming and digital media ecosystem, this provides a framework to bill AI agents for content access instead of relying on legacy ad-supported models. Watch for whether these identity tokens become a prerequisite for accessing premium publisher APIs as major CDNs begin blocking unverified agents by default.

The push for verifiable agent identity comes amid a major shift in how infrastructure providers handle automated traffic. Per Cloudflare, July 2026, automated systems now account for 57.4% of all web traffic to HTML content. In response, Cloudflare announced that starting September 15, 2026, it will block crawlers classified as 'Agent' or 'Training' by default on ad-supported pages for new domains. This move forces a choice for AI operators: remain anonymous and be blocked, or adopt identity frameworks like Experian's to maintain access.

Simultaneously, the technical standards for this 'Know Your Agent' (KYA) layer are coalescing around the Model Context Protocol (MCP). According to W3C reports from April 2026, new community groups are developing DID-based specifications to cryptographically bind agents to their controlling organizations. The Model Context Protocol, which saw a major 2026-07-28 specification release, has now reached over 110 million monthly downloads and is evolving to support stateless authorization through OAuth 2.1, aligning with the real-time edge checks Fastly and Experian are deploying.

The commercial landscape for these services is growing rapidly as specialized fintech firms enter the stack. Skyfire, an early partner in the Experian ecosystem, raised $9.5 million in seed funding as of October 2024 from investors including Coinbase Ventures and a16z to build a 'Visa for AI.' Per Juniper Research, April 2026, agentic commerce spend is forecast to hit $1.5 trillion by 2030, driven by these new rails that satisfy the 'Human to Agent Binding' requirements now required by global payment networks like Visa and Mastercard.