A recent analysis from Above the Law argues that the rise of agentic commerce—where AI agents negotiate and transact—will not do away with internal corporate governance. Instead, the author contends, such commerce will make vague governance more difficult to conceal. The piece frames this as a legal and policy challenge: when an AI agent acts, the underlying rules that guided it must be clear, and someone must own them.
The article does not offer a definitive answer to the ownership question. It emphasizes that companies cannot rely on loose, unwritten policies once agents are operating in commercial settings. The author suggests that the pressure of agentic commerce will force organizations to formalize decision-making rules, because the actions of an AI agent will inevitably be scrutinized.
For lawyers and policymakers, the takeaway is that governance is not obsolete but newly central. The source focuses on the internal dimension—who within a company sets and enforces the rules—rather than on broader regulatory questions. As the piece notes, the problem is not that agents act without rules, but that the rules themselves may be unclear or unowned. That ambiguity, the author warns, will be harder to hide as agents take on more commercial tasks.