AI agents made 6.4 million x402 payments on Solana and Base from July 23 to August 26, 2026, but news products were absent from the most-called paid resources. The figures come from BeInCrypto Research’s State of AI Agent Payments 2026 report, according to BeInCrypto. The payments totaled $119,947; 90.8% were below one cent and accounted for 10.7% of the value. Solana recorded 94.5% of transactions in eight days, from August 19 to 26.

The report’s x402 catalogue listed 14,791 paid resources across 1,610 hostnames from August 16 to September 15, 2026. Its most-called resource was a two-cent AI-generated token safety check; web searches, Twitter searches and webpage reads also ranked in the top 10, but no news product did. Yana Prikhodchenko said agents could buy individual articles with stablecoins through x402, without subscriptions. Meanwhile, Google Search referrals to more than 2,500 news sites fell 33% between November 2024 and November 2025. ChatGPT referrals are growing, but Google still sends about 500 times as many readers. Only a fifth of digital leaders surveyed by the Reuters Institute expect AI licensing deals to generate substantial revenue.