CBInsights has released an update focused on and entitled, the Future of the workforce: How AI agents will transform enterprise workflows.
CBInsights dive into what agents are, their limitations, key companies, and “implications for the future of work.”
As noted in the research report from CBInsights, an empowered digital workforce would reshape industries as we know them. The implications would be “enormous, changing how companies hire and scale, as well as what they can achieve with a small headcount.”
That future isn’t too far off, according to CBInsights.
The idea of autonomous AI agents — LLM-powered bots that can independently reason and execute tasks — “caught on like wildfire in 2023, marking an important evolution beyond chatbots and copilots.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has described agents as “AI’s killer function” as recently as May 2024.
While much of the tech remains limited in its ability to execute tasks reliably, use cases are gaining traction “in horizontal enterprise applications like customer support, sales, and engineering.”
They mined CB Insights startup, financing, business model, and buyer interview data “to map the evolving landscape and analyze its future.”
In the research report, CBInsights cover and highlight the following:
- The state of AI agents: Investment is surging to companies in the space, but limitations — most notably, agent reliability — remain.
- Leading horizontal applications and impacts: The landscape of VC-backed agent startups is dominated by a focus on horizontal applications — across sales, customer support, and other enterprise and general productivity workflows.
- Emerging industry applications and opportunities: While few agentic companies focus on single industries, companies are emerging to target workflows across financial services, industrials, and more.
While it remains somewhat unclear how AI will impact the global economy in the future, there are certain industries that will most likely benefit significantly more than others. For instance, Fintech and Regtech platforms are already leveraging advanced AI algorithms to improve critical decision-making processes. This helps with offering more secure and frictionless financial services and other digital products.