#AI agents

#AI agents

"There was this emerging bragging right around the number of agents I had or I have in production," he said. "I think that's probably the wrong measure." The value of AI deployment is better measured by the quality - not the quantity - of agents, he said. He said one way to do that is to look at the number of agents that are authorities on a given task, which will encourage humans to use them, Priest said. The other is to evaluate the number of humans using those agents to execute tasks to achieve a prioritized outcome for a company.

The ad industry is racing toward a not-too-distant future where AI agents negotiate programmatic deals on their own - and Prebid doesn't want publishers to get left behind. The group that turned header bidding software into an open-source standard announced on Thursday that it's taking ownership of code developed using Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) that will power publisher-side AI agents.

"Everyone's looking at all the software use and saying, 'How fast could I vibe code that?'" Taylor said. "'I wonder if it's the wrong question.' Whether someone can quickly vibe code an app in a web browser isn't "the most interesting question in software," he added. Instead, the software we use today is set to be replaced, and that's the real disruption, Taylor said.

Descope has announced Agentic Identity Hub 2.0, an update to its no-code identity platform for AI agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers. The new release gives developers and security teams a dedicated UI and control plane to manage authorization, access control, credentials, and policies for AI agents and MCP servers, Descope said. Unveiled January 26, Agentic Identity Hub 2.0 lets MCP developers and AI agent builders use the platform to manage AI agents as first-class identities alongside human users,

We are building the first vertically integrated full-service platform for legal. We allow the end-to-end completion of legal requests with the help of AI agents and experts in the loop. Lawyers are trapped in the time-for-money model. Their expertise is sold by the hour. Lawyers are selling their most valuable asset, their intellect, in finite blocks of time, effectively capping their potential. nu:legal breaks this ceiling by allowing professionals to transform their knowledge into scalable, agentic services.

Founded by experienced entrepreneurs who've built and scaled products before, we move fast and focus on impact over hype. The Role We're looking for a working student to join us as a UI/UX Designer. You'll work directly with the founders on our product-shaping how users interact with our chatbot and AI agents. This means designing novel user flows for interactions that don't have established playbooks yet. You'll have real ownership, high expectations, and see your work in production.

Although news reports (and dinner table conversations) commonly focus on harmful uses of GenAI tool and dystopian perils of artificial general intelligence ( AGI) (AI that thinks like, or better than, a human), the deployment of AI agents, and more broadly agentic AI systems, is a paradigm shift that is happening now as the technology becomes increasingly accessible and reliable.

AI is disrupting more than the software industry, and is doing so at a breakneck speed. Not long ago, designers were deep in Figma variables and pixel-perfect mockups. Now, tools like v0, Lovable, and Cursor are enabling instant, vibe-based prototyping that makes old methods feel almost quaint. What's coming into sharper focus isn't fidelity, it's foresight. Part of the work of Product Design today is conceptual: sensing trends, building future-proof systems, and thinking years ahead.

Software engineering didn't adopt AI agents faster because engineers are more adventurous, or the use case was better. They adopted them more quickly because they already had Git. Long before AI arrived, software development had normalized version control, branching, structured approvals, reproducibility, and diff-based accountability. These weren't conveniences. They were the infrastructure that made collaboration possible. When AI agents appeared, they fit naturally into a discipline that already knew how to absorb change without losing control.

A year-and-a-half ago, management consulting firm McKinsey had just 3,000 AI agents in its possession, with its 40,000 employees far outnumbering its agentic fleet. But in just 18 months, that number has grown more than 500% to about 20,000 AI agents supporting the company's work, CEO Bob Sternfels said on Harvard Business Review's Ideacast. Now, the company is evaluating how well job candidates can work with its AI tool as part of the interview process.

I attended the convention, held in New York City from January 11 to 13, for the first time tohear from industry insiders about the retail trends to watch in 2026. This year's event drew speakers such as Walmart's incoming CEO John Furner and Google CEO Sundar Pichai, who announced a new AI deal this week, as well as Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin. It was clear that artificial intelligence was the big topic on the minds of the attendees from over 5,000 brands at the event.

The soaring valuations of AI companies aren't just a bet on better software. They're a wager on who will control human labor in the future, according to Roman Yampolskiy, a University of Louisville computer science professor who was one of the first academics to warn about AI's risks. As artificial intelligence moves from tools to increasingly autonomous agents, Yampolskiy said markets are pricing in a radical shift: machines providing "free labor" at scale.

Update January 9, 2026: Although the acquisition amount has not been disclosed, we do know that Snowflake has purchased the ITOM platform Observe. Before the deal was finalized, Snowflake had already considered adopting Observe, the company told The Register. Now, the company can not only offer observability functionality to customers, but also apply it itself. However, the emphasis is on preventing downtime and the loss of important data for users of the Snowflake platform.

Last week, news broke that Meta is buying Chinese AI startup Manus for around $2 billion. The company is known for its AI agent that can handle everything from job interviews to stock analysis. Meta plans to integrate Manus' AI agent into its own products. Now, the Financial Times reports that China's Ministry of Commerce has decided to review the purchase to determine whether the deal violates the country's export control rules for technology.

A lot of mega-cap tech titans are ending off 2025 on a high note with big acquisitions. Meta Platforms ( NASDAQ:META) joined in the year-end deal-making spree by buying up AI agent startup Manus in a deal reportedly worth over $2 billion. Undoubtedly, Manus is an incredible technology that's already gained quite the following, with around $100 million in annual recurring revenue.