This episode breaks down Sundae Bar's strategy to build the "Amazon for AI agents," a marketplace where anyone can commission, buy, and sell custom AI agents powered by the BitTensor network.
Introducing Sundae Bar: The "Amazon for AI Agents"
- Core Business: The platform serves as a central hub where developers can host, scale, and monetize their AI agents, while businesses and individuals can find and purchase agents tailored to their specific needs.
- Public Listing: Sundae Bar is uniquely positioned as a publicly listed company (on the London Stock Exchange's AIM market), which provides significant access to capital for growth and development.
- Jill Kenny frames the vision clearly: "We want to be the conduit... we want to make the process as seamless as possible because not everyone's a dev and not everyone can like take a piece of code and implement it into their workflows."
The Vision for Utility Agents
- Example Use Case (HR Agent): An HR agent could be tasked with writing a job description, posting it to job boards, processing incoming resumes, pre-interviewing candidates, and scheduling the top contenders directly into a manager's calendar.
- Customization is Crucial: The platform is designed to handle variations in user workflows, such as different CRM systems or data sources, by allowing agents to be tweaked and customized. This addresses a major gap in the current market where businesses struggle to find off-the-shelf agents that perfectly match their needs.
Technical Architecture and Key Partnerships
- Leta Integration: Agents built on Leta can be fully integrated and managed through the Sundae Bar front-end interface. Leta's platform is model-agnostic, meaning developers can use models from providers like OpenAI (GPT) or Anthropic (Claude).
- Stateful Agents: A key feature of Leta's agents is that they are stateful, meaning they learn and evolve over time based on user interactions and training. This is critical for creating agents that function like human teammates who grow with experience, rather than static tools that perform repetitive tasks.
Building the Agent Catalog
- Organic Submissions: Any developer, regardless of where their agent is built or hosted, can submit their agent to be listed on the Sundae Bar marketplace through a submission form.
- "Scout" Discovery Agent: To help users navigate the growing catalog, Sundae Bar has developed its own agent named "Scout." Users can describe their needs to Scout, which then searches the marketplace and recommends the most suitable agents.
- The Subnet Pipeline: When a user needs a fully custom agent that doesn't exist in the catalog, they can commission its creation. This request is sent to Subnet 121, where developers (miners) compete to build it.
The Marketplace Business Model
- Revenue Streams:
- Percentage of Sales: Sundae Bar takes a commission on every agent hired or purchased through the platform.
- Sponsored Listings: Developers can pay to have their agents promoted within the platform, similar to an ad model.
- Monthly Fees: As the platform adds more tools for developers (e.g., metrics, marketing materials), it will introduce monthly subscription fees.
- Pricing Dynamics: Agent pricing is expected to vary widely based on complexity and usage. Jill anticipates that while initial agent costs may be high, prices will decrease over time as models become cheaper and more efficient, while the volume of sales per agent increases significantly.
The Agent Creation Process via Subnet 121
- Brief Submission: A customer submits a request for a custom agent. They pay a fee for the brief, which ensures genuine, high-intent requests.
- Brief Refinement: The Sundae Bar team refines the customer's request into a detailed technical brief, setting developers up for success.
- Developer Competition: The brief is sent to the subnet, where developers (miners) compete to build the best agent that meets the specifications.
- Validation and Selection: The submitted agents are graded, and the winning agent is selected.
- Marketplace Listing: The newly created agent is delivered to the customer and also listed on the marketplace as a template for other users to purchase and customize.
Solving the Validation Challenge for Custom Agents
- The Problem: Unlike subnets like Ridges, which can use standardized software engineering benchmarks, Sundae Bar's custom agents lack a single, universal test.
- The Solution: Leta Evals: Leta has just launched "Leta Evals," an evaluation and grading framework for their agents. Sundae Bar will integrate this framework into its subnet.
- New Validation Process: Validators on Subnet 121 will use the Leta Evals scorecard to objectively grade the agents submitted by miners. This removes subjectivity, reduces the risk of gamification, and ensures the best-performing agent is selected. Jill states, "This for us was like such a big light bulb moment because validating customizable agents is really complicated."
Incentives, Ownership, and the Flywheel Effect
- Developer Ownership: The developer who builds the agent retains ownership. They earn emissions from the subnet during the creation contest and then earn fiat revenue from ongoing sales in the marketplace.
- Incentivizing Ideas: Mark proposes that the original user who wrote the brief should also receive a share of future sales. Jill agrees this is a powerful incentive, suggesting an affiliate-style model where the "idea generator" receives a kickback on every sale of their agent concept.
- Strategic Implication: This model incentivizes niche experts to bring valuable, real-world use cases to the platform, creating a flywheel where good ideas generate revenue for both the creator and the developer, enriching the entire marketplace.
From Red Bull to BitTensor: A Unique Founder Journey
- Consumer-First Mindset: Her time at Red Bull, creating large-scale media experiences, instilled a focus on building products and brands that resonate with a broad audience. This is reflected in Sundae Bar's accessible name and intuitive marketplace concept.
- Bridging the Gap: This consumer-centric approach is a strategic advantage for BitTensor, which has historically been strong on back-end infrastructure but lighter on user-facing applications. Sundae Bar aims to be a key front-end that brings BitTensor's power to a mainstream business audience.
The Strategic Advantage of Being a Publicly Listed Subnet
- Access to Capital: Being publicly listed allows Sundae Bar to raise capital from public markets, providing a crucial advantage for funding development, marketing, and scaling operations.
- Governance and Transparency: The company must adhere to strict public reporting and governance standards, which can build trust with enterprise clients and large-scale investors.
- Educating Stakeholders: A key part of Jill's role is educating traditional market shareholders about the value proposition of BitTensor, bridging the gap between decentralized technology and public financial markets.
Conclusion
Sundae Bar is strategically positioning itself as the primary consumer-facing marketplace for AI agents built on BitTensor's decentralized infrastructure. By solving the complex challenges of custom agent creation and validation, it aims to unlock a powerful new market for AI-driven productivity tools. Investors and researchers should monitor the platform's ability to attract both high-quality developers and paying customers, as its success will serve as a key indicator of BitTensor's potential for mainstream commercial adoption.
