Building the Global Backbone of the Agentic Web

Sandeep Mehandru
2026

Abstract

We have reached the "Wild West" era of artificial intelligence. While the world is mesmerized by the latest LLM benchmarks, a much more profound shift is happening beneath the surface: the transition from writing explicit code to orchestrating autonomous intent. However, we have a massive infrastructure problem. We are currently building millions of specialized agents, yet we have no global address book to find them, no shared language to verify their skills, and no security layer to ensure they aren't actively sabotaging our workflows. We are living through the "Cisco Moment" of the Agentic Web—a pivotal era where the winners won't be defined by who builds the smartest model, but by who builds the universal backbone that allows trillions of models to discover, trust, and execute alongside one another.
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