A day after Anthropic’s office push, Databricks jumps in with AI agents that never sleep

Résumé détaillé

The $190 billion AI startup's new tool, which operates in the background and shadows the user's daily workday, comes on the heels of Anthropic's renewed push for corporate users.

On Wednesday, San Francisco startup Databricks launched a new set of agentic AI tools that continuously analyze and organize the reams of data scattered throughout a business—a capability Databricks says will transform the way office workers do their jobs.

“The agents are running in the background all the time. So it’s always on,” Databricks CEO and cofounder Ali Ghodsi told Fortune ahead of the announcement. “I personally use it every day. Every hour of the day. It’s basically made me a 10x better CEO than I was a year ago,” Ghodsi said.

The product introduction comes a day after Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI models, released its own set of AI productivity tools aimed at corporate users. Those tools include a new AI-powered spreadsheet application that competes with Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets, as well as a feature that lets Claude join video calls, allowing the AI to listen to the conversation and “start on the work while people are still talking.”

Databricks’ updated version of its Genie assistant, launched Wednesday, also operates in the background, shadowing an office worker throughout the day, proactively making suggestions and retrieving information based on whatever is happening. A separate “Ontology” feature essentially scans all the data within an organization—from management reporting lines to projects in various departments—so that an individual can quickly access information or run analyses.

The AI industry is stepping up efforts to make inroads into corporations and to broaden the base of paying customers. While AI has transformed the way that software programmers do their jobs, becoming an indispensable tool in the profession, the technology is still in the experimental phase for other business functions where the return on investment is not as clear-cut.

With the advent of AI agents that autonomously perform tasks on a user’s behalf, as well as recent advances in AI model capabilities, some believe the technology may be ready to capture a…

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