A recent Anthropic experiment may offer a glimpse at how agentic commerce could work in two-sided marketplaces, where buyers and sellers negotiate prices. Called “ Project Deal ,” the test compared two large language models to determine whether stronger AI systems would gain an advantage in autonomous marketplaces. While the experiment does not necessarily predict how AI agents would negotiate with humans in real-world commerce, it revealed both model differences and user blindness to poorer economic outcomes. Agentic commerce could take many forms, including something dynamic like Project Deal. Project Deal Anthropic conducted the experiment in an internal Slack employee marketplace. Sixty-nine staffers allowed Claude AI agents to negotiate the purchase and sale of real items on their behalf , including books, sporting goods, and household products. Once the marketplace opened, the agents operated autonomously, proposing prices, responding to counteroffers, and closing deals without human approval.…