Anthropic quietly released an internal experimental study called "Project Deal" on April 24, 2026, demonstrating the ability of AI agents to negotiate and trade autonomously in real market environments. The experiment took place in an office market based on Slack, with the Claude model representing 69 employees performing buying and selling functions. The results showed that in an environment involving real money transactions, the Claude agent successfully facilitated 186 transactions out of over 500 listed items, with a total transaction value exceeding $4,000.

claude

In terms of technology, Anthropic compared the performance of different model specifications through parallel market tests, confirming that the Opus model significantly outperformed the Haiku model in negotiation games, and human participants were unable to detect the performance differences in strategies during interactions. This result marks the transition of "agent economy" from theoretical simulation to practical application, as AI not only understands complex personalized instructions but also maximizes interests through multiple rounds of bargaining.

Due to this news, eBay's stock price fell by about 4.5% on the same day, as concerns grow about the impact of AI's autonomous pricing capabilities on traditional matching transaction models. Industry analysts believe that as AI agents gain closed-loop trading capabilities, future business interactions may evolve into a "model-to-model" format. This decentralized technological trend is forcing traditional e-commerce platforms to re-evaluate their business models. AI is no longer just a tool for assisting searches but is evolving into a commercial entity with independent decision-making capabilities.