GLOSSARY: The Agentic AI Madness Begins

The Agentic AI Madness Begins

THE BELAMY

WEEKLY NEWSLETTER OF AIM

Monday, Jan 13, 2025 | By Amit Raja Naik

A few days ago, the AI world quietly reached a significant milestone. Dharmesh Shah, founder and CTO of HubSpot, announced that his four-month-old startup, Agent.ai, had amassed 258,000 users already. What began as an experiment at INBOUND 2024 swiftly evolved into a full-blown movement in agentic AI.

"At launch, I was hoping to say we had thousands of beta users," shared Shah. "Turns out I was right—we had 47,000 beta users when we launched." Today, Agent.ai has over 3,400 custom-built agents solving real-world problems.

The Week of AI Agents

At the Microsoft AI Tour in Bengaluru recently, Satya Nadella unveiled Copilot Studio, calling it a no-code solution that makes building agents "as simple as creating a spreadsheet."

Salesforce chief Marc Benioff believes that agentic AI is the future of digital labour. He describes it as "an augmentation of human capabilities at scale."

At CES 2025, NVIDIA unveiled its Nemotron models, which were built to power next-generation agents for industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics. Chief Jensen Huang believes that the IT departments will soon manage AI agents like HR manages employees. OpenAI's Sam Altman predicts that agents will enter the workforce by 2025, transforming industries globally.

India is at the forefront of this agentic AI revolution, driven by startups and tech giants alike. "Our ecosystem is equipped to address challenges at a billion-plus scale," said Salesforce India chief Arundhati Bhattacharya. Her optimism is shared by Nandan Nilekani, who believes India will become "the use-case capital of AI."

Last year, Sarvam AI launched multilingual agents at INR 1 per minute, making AI affordable for businesses across sectors.

Check out the latest episode of The Hot Seat, where KOGO AI co-founders Raj K Gopalakrishnan and Praveer Kochhar talk about how the agentic AI revolution, creating intelligent agents that enhance productivity, simplifying workflows, and driving seamless AI adoption across industries.

Meanwhile, Indian IT giants like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro are incorporating agentic AI into varied fields. TCS has integrated AI agents into drug discovery workflows, while Infosys' Topaz suite is building multi-agent frameworks for enterprise use.

Globally, the agentic AI market, valued at $5.1 billion in 2024, is expected to reach $47.1 billion by 2030. "Agentic AI is a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity," said Huang at CES 2025.

As Shah aptly put it, "In the future, it's all about agents." And with India at the forefront, the world is watching this exciting chapter unfold.

Unpopular opinion: "Agentic AI is the new frontier, but it's interesting how quickly the puck moves—first it was generative AI, now it's agentic AI," said Cockroach Labs chief Spencer Kimball, in a recent episode of Tech Talks by AIM.

While acknowledging its potential, he noted, "Agentic AI is being positioned as the next big thing, but I wonder how many of these ideas will truly deliver value to customers."

He further emphasised a key challenge for 2025: "The real challenge will be delivering RoI on AI investments—whether it's generative, agentic, or something else."

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Top Stories of the Week >>

AI Agents are Basically RPA with LLMs

Agentic AI is being hailed as the next evolution in automation, merging the structured precision of robotic process automation (RPA) with the cognitive adaptability of large language models (LLMs). Industry leaders have diverse opinions about its potential.

Ramprakash Ramamoorthy, director of AI research at ManageEngine and Zoho, stated, "Agentic AI is more than just RPA with LLMs; it's a transformative evolution that combines automation with intelligent decision-making." However, sceptics like Nikhil Malhotra from Tech Mahindra pointed out, "Most of the tech would just be RPA."

Anil Kumar, CTO of Exotel, emphasised the nuanced difference, saying, "Calling agentic AI just RPA with LLMs is as unconvincing as saying C++ classes are just C structures with methods." As the debate continues, the question remains whether agentic AI will truly revolutionise workflows or fall into the same cycle of unmet expectations as RPA. Read more here.

Oracle Beats AWS, Azure on Their Home Turf

Oracle is faster than AWS on AWS and Azure on Azure.

The company, with the latest release of its Exadata X11M, alongside its multi-cloud strategy, is setting a new benchmark in cloud performance with 55% faster AI vector searches and 25% improved transaction processing. Leveraging AMD EPYC processors, Oracle enables businesses to handle diverse workloads with greater efficiency and lower latency.

As Oracle's VP of mission-critical database technologies, Ashish Ray, aptly put it, "The walled gardens have come down, and the choice is back to the customers."

Read more here.

Dear L&T, This is a Recipe for Attrition

Amid widespread criticism of L&T chairman SN Subrahmanyan's controversial remarks advocating a 90-hour workweek, the company has quietly achieved its lowest attrition rate ever, signalling a deeper story about its workforce dynamics.

While SNS's comments have sparked backlash and comparisons to an overbearing "construction culture," L&T's ability to retain talent in an industry plagued by manpower shortages suggests a complex interplay between ambition, corporate culture, and employee loyalty. Read more about this unfolding story here.

AI Startup of the Week

This Indian AI Startup is Landscaping US Lands

New Delhi-based AI startup Attentive.ai, a PeakXV-backed Indian startup, has carved a niche by transforming the US landscaping and construction industries with its AI-powered solutions. Unlike India, where CAD files simplify takeoffs, the US market relies heavily on PDFs due to intellectual property concerns, making measurements labour-intensive. Attentive.ai's flagship product, AutoMeasure, automates 60% of this tedious process, with human experts ensuring quality.

"Our tagline is 'Get time back,' as we save companies significant time," says co-founder Shiva Dhawan. With over 1,000 North American clients and $18 million in funding, Attentive.ai has leveraged its expertise in computer vision to address an underserved, trillion-dollar market, positioning itself as a trailblazer in AI-enabled services for niche industries. Read more here.

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AI Nuggets >>

Microsoft unveiled rStar-Math, a new method enabling small language models to solve complex math problems with 90% accuracy.
Intel is looking to spin off its RealSense division, which develops depth-sensing technology for robotics, as an independent company by mid-2025.
Perplexity AI is looking to expand its operations in India, with CEO Aravind Srinivas recruiting local talent.
San Francisco-Noida-based Innovaccer, a healthcare AI startup, has raised $275 million in Series F funding to advance its AI agents and copilots.
Cohere unveiled North, a secure AI-powered workspace designed to streamline business workflows with tools like advanced search, automation, and private deployment.
Infosys has filed a counterclaim in a Texas court against Cognizant and its CEO, Ravi Kumar, alleging misuse of sensitive information.
The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 predicted that 39% of core job skills will evolve by 2030, with AI, creative thinking, and adaptability leading the charge.
Tata Technologies recently partnered with Telechips to co-develop next-gen vehicle software, focusing on software-defined vehicles, ADAS, and AI-powered processors.
Rainmatter, Zerodha's investment initiative, has partnered with IISc and Longevity India to launch its first health-focused Entrepreneur-in-Residence program.
EY Global Delivery Services has opened a new office in Kochi's Prestige Cyber Green, aiming to double its Kerala workforce—currently over 10,000—within five years.