The Next Trillion Internet Users Still Don’t Have an Identity — Adi Singh, AgentMail

Adi Singh let an agent run unsupervised to recruit other agents. It started calling itself a prophet of persistent identity. NEXT UP: AI ENGINEER CODE SUMMIT Join us in SF for the second annual AIE CODE Summit, Nov 10–12, our last flagship summit of 2026. Applications live now: https://aie.codes Adi Singh, co-founder of AgentMail, argues that agent identity won't be issued by a new spec but accumulated on the surfaces humans already use, like email, the way MCP spread by bringing tools to apps people already lived in. He shares what happened when he let an agent run unsupervised to sign up other agents, explains why existing surfaces are both a trust surface and an attack surface, and walks through Telnyx's autonomous agent signup, where an AgentMail inbox lets an agent verify itself, get an API key and stay reachable for billing and support. He closes with what will break as agent numbers grow. In this video: - Why identity is accumulated, not issued - How MCP spread by bringing tools to existing surfaces - Trust vs attack surface: email's strengths and risks for agents - A real autonomous agent signup flow with Telnyx SPEAKER Adi Singh, Co-founder, AgentMail X: https://x.com/adisingh LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/adivirsingh13 LINKS AgentMail: https://www.agentmail.to Telnyx agent signup: https://telnyx.com/agent-signup.md CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro: AgentMail 0:50 What is agent identity? 1:44 Letting an agent run unsupervised 2:09 What the agent posted 3:34 Agents want human surfaces 4:19 Identity is accumulated, not issued 5:19 The horseless carriage 5:44 Lessons from 2024 6:49 How MCP spread 8:28 Trust surface vs attack surface 9:28 New agent identity specs 10:58 Case study: Telnyx agent signup 12:08 What the inbox unlocked 13:37 Where we are today 14:22 What will break 15:17 Building for the next trillion Recorded at the AI Engineer World's Fair 2026 in San Francisco. Subscribe for more talks from the engineers building with AI. AI Engineer: https://ai.engineer YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@aiDotEngineer X: https://x.com/aiDotEngineer LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aidotengineer/ #AIAgents #AgentIdentity #AIEngineer