On an average workday, Dhruv Amin chats with dozens of colleagues to get things done at his AI startup Anything. He might ask Gwen, his executive assistant, to schedule a meeting, then troubleshoot a technical problem with Cody, his coding partner. Then he might check in with Betsy for search engine optimization, or Juno for onboarding customers.
If the office runs out of snacks, he sends a Slack message to Justin, the office manager charged with stocking the kitchen. But none of these co-workers are people. They’re artificial intelligence agents, software that handles tasks without human intervention.
Anything is one of several startups building them, and betting on a future where workplaces will increasingly turn over their sales, marketing, coding and other tasks to semi-autonomous AI. At Anything, there are 15 human employees and roughly 150 agents – a ratio that Amin believes will soon be the norm. In the San Francisco tech scene, agents have quickly become a new status symbol, showing that a company can do more with less, several startup employees said.
It’s common for workers to brag about how well their agents can handle common office drudgery like answering emails or help with essential business operations such as giving sales pitches. But agents are also creating tension. They are alienating customers and colleagues who seek human interaction, eliminating roles and forcing employees to become overnight managers of the bots that often make mistakes.
While startup techies such as Amin are some of the early adopters, corporate America may not be far behind. About 40% of large organizations used AI agents in some capacity between May 2025 and June 2026, up from 27% the year before, according to McKinsey’s State of AI Global Survey. Companies also expect to scale back their workforce by 10% to 15% over the next few years as they delegate more work to AI, a recent report from Boston Consulting Group found.
In the present moment, companies are not seeing major productivity gains from AI, MIT research shows. A wave of startups and big tech companies are fueling the push toward AI agents, selling companies on automated co-workers. There’s Viktor, a company that lets companies create their own “AI chief of staff”, and Lindy, which makes customizable agents for sales, customer support or admin work.
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