Paytm founder and chief executive Vijay Shekhar Sharma has predicted that autonomous AI agents will replace smartphone applications by 2027, arguing that operating-system-level access will allow personal AI agents to execute multi-step tasks on a user's behalf without requiring the app-by-app interaction model that has defined mobile computing for close to two decades. Sharma made the comments in a post on X on September 7, 2026, forecasting that 2026 would cement machines' lead in code generation as a precursor to this broader shift.
The prediction places Sharma among a growing chorus of technology executives arguing that the current app-centric paradigm — where users open discrete applications to perform discrete tasks — is a transitional model rather than a permanent one, destined to be superseded by agentic interfaces capable of stringing together bookings, payments, comparisons and other actions across multiple services autonomously. For Paytm, a company built almost entirely around a mobile-app interface for payments and financial services, the prediction carries particular weight: it implicitly signals how the company's own leadership is thinking about the platform risk that agentic AI could pose to app-based businesses across the fintech sector.
Sharma's framing of OS-level access as the critical enabler echoes a broader industry debate over which layer of the technology stack will ultimately control the agentic AI experience — device manufacturers, operating-system providers, or a new class of AI-native intermediaries sitting above both. If personal AI agents do gain the kind of deep, multi-step operating-system permissions Sharma describes, the implications would extend well beyond consumer convenience, raising fresh questions around security, liability and how existing app-store economics and data-privacy frameworks would need to adapt to an environment where software increasingly acts on a user's behalf rather than simply responding to explicit input.
Whether the 2027 timeline proves accurate or, as with many bold technology predictions, ultimately slips, Sharma's comments add a prominent Indian fintech voice to an increasingly global conversation about agentic AI's disruptive potential. For India's own sprawling app ecosystem — including Paytm's own super-app model — the prediction implies a period of genuine strategic uncertainty about which layer of the stack will capture value if the interaction paradigm shifts as decisively as Sharma expects.
