Hubspot CTO says the next step in AI may be networks of agents that collaborate to achieve more complex tasks, mostly without human supervision.
It’s commonplace for artificial intelligence (AI) experts in research and industry to talk about AI agents and agentic AI as the focus of innovation. OpenAI’s Sam Altman said as much almost a year ago at the company’s unveiling of an online store for custom GPTs and has elaborated at length about how agents will take on much more complex tasks than today’s copilots.
The next step beyond today’s agentic AI may be networks of agents that collaborate to achieve more complex tasks, mostly without human supervision, according to Dharmesh Shah, co-founder and chief technology officer of software maker Hubspot.
« Agents are effectively a progression up from copilots », said Shah. « And I think both will have their place in the business landscape. What makes agents interesting is that they can take on, kind-of, higher-order goals that usually involve multiple steps. »
Hubspot is competing with firms, such as Salesforce, to roll out various agents to assist with customer relationship management (CRM) tasks, including sales, marketing, customer relationship management, and more.
To connect those agents, Hubspot is promoting the idea of a network that acts as a marketplace for agents. At its annual user conference a week ago, Inbound, alongside a suite of AI offerings call Breeze, Hubspot unveiled a network for agents called agent.ai.
The offering has over 47,000 users, Hubspot announced, and more than 1,700 builders signed up to create agents of their own.
Hubspot CTO Dharmesh Shah: « We’re going to see a whole new generation of developers that are going to be seeking a platform on which to build their ideas.
