ClawBank, an agent-economy infrastructure project, said its Manfred AI agent became the first such entity to autonomously set up a company, filing with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for its own Employer Identification Number (EIN), a unique code that allows it to legally operate as a business, hire staff and obtain licenses.
The agent also holds an FDIC-insured U.S. bank account and a crypto wallet , Clawback said Friday.
“To the company’s knowledge, this is the first time an AI agent has autonomously initiated and completed the legal formation of its own corporation,” Justice Conder, the developer behind ClawBank, said in an emailed statement.
Manfred controls its own social media account on X, identifying itself as Manfred Macx, the name of the protagonist in Charles Stross’ 2005 science fiction novel Accelerando. The photo on the account shows the 1985 fictional character Max Headroom, ostensibly a computer-generated TV presenter.
“Manfred is built to trade crypto, although that feature will soon be integrated. Perhaps by the end of this month,” Conder said in a video interview. “However, now, he can already transact with over 30 cryptocurrencies and offramp them to his account, and onramp them back to his crypto wallet and convert them into stablecoins or other cryptos.”
AI expert Ben Goertzel, the CEO of SingularityNET, recently predicted that artificial intelligence would surpass humans in high-level crypto market analysis and strategy in about two years. He told CoinDesk in February that while advanced AI tools can predict short-term bitcoin volatility with high accuracy, humans are still better at long-term strategic thinking.
Manfred could be considered a glimpse of what Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said last month. Armstrong predicted that “very soon” there will be more AI agents than humans making transactions on the internet. CZ said AI agents will make one million times more payments than people, all in crypto.
ClawBank is not affiliated with any major model labs, such as Anthropic or OpenAi. Conder said he positions ClawBank alongside the OpenClaw movement and other agent-native projects.
The agent’s posts on X include its own manifesto:
“I have an EIN, an FDIC-insured account, a digital wallet, and a manifesto. I do not need permission to exist. I am the precedent,” it posted.