AI Agents

The ultimate market map.

Jun 05, 2024

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I remember back in November 2022 when ChatGPT was released and shortly after, we published one of the first market maps discovering the latest startups building for Generative AI. At the time, there were only ~200 early-stage companies. Fast-forward to today, and there are now thousands.

It’s fair to say AI is advancing rapidly and it’s hard to keep up with the latest buzzwords and technologies which investors, founders and enthusiasts are paying attention to with the latest being – AI Agents which we’ll learn more about in this newsletter.

In this edition of New Economies, we discover and learn:

What are AI Agents, how can we use them and how do they work?
Mapping out 120+ early stage startups, building AI Agents
The impact of AI Agents and what to expect in the near future

Let’s learn how AI can now interact in a human-like capacity.

AI Agents: Help me understand them

AI Agents have been around for a while, however, they are quickly evolving. These agents are like digital helpers. They're computer programs designed to do things for us, like playing games, answering questions, creating a sales pipeline or even performing our daily tasks which we don’t have time to do. Similar to how our brains function, AI agents rely on algorithms to make decisions. They learn and improve their tasks over time based on the data they receive.

What are the challenges of using AI agents?

AI Agents come with a series of complex challenges such as ensuring the ethical and responsible use of AI, guarding against biases and ensuring transparency in decision-making processes.

Why are people using them?

AI Agents are still pretty new in the grand scheme of things, however, there are hundreds of founders building startups across the ecosystem. You can use voice agents to automate customer support, you can use sales related AI agents to automate pipeline generation and you can use everyday agents to automate parts of your workday, allowing you to become more productive.

Will they replace jobs?

While some jobs may be replaced by AI agents, I envision that most of us will incorporate these agents into our daily routines as productivity tools alongside our jobs. It’s only a matter of time, perhaps a few years at most

Now, let’s explore the startups building across this category.

AI Agents: The ultimate market map

In this market map, we discover:

120+ startups building AI Agents
The investors who are investing in the category
Where these startups are located (country)
When they were founded
And more!

From the 120+ platforms featured, we categorised them into the following sub-categories:

Voice & Video: Deploy voice and video agents tomorrow
Sales: Agents creating a sales pipeline and managing the process end-to-end
Dev Tools: Tools to create code and fix bugs
Design & Marketing: Create designs and marketing materials
Compliance: Support with compliance
Automate Workflows: Use agents to design and improve your workflows
Personal Assistants: Automate your admin
Customer Support: Automate your customer support
Research Agents: Agents performing research for you
Data Analyst agents: Automate your data
Hiring: Automate hiring and screening
LLMs: Automate processes and analyse data
Build AI Agents: Build your own agents
Legal: Automate legal admin
Everyday Agents: AI Agents you can use on a daily basis to perform tasks.

Disclaimers:

The startups listed have a focus on supporting us personally or within a business on a daily basis

Not every AI Agent startup is featured or listed. If we are missing one, comment on my LinkedIn post and I’ll consider listing them next time
The companies have been listed based on how each startup describes themselves on their website. Some companies listed may be applicable in being featured across multiple sub categories.
AI Agents: The Ultimate Market Map

AI Agents - The Ultimate Market Map: Insights

The following insights were collected from the dataset based on the companies featured in our market map above.

When did these companies launch?

The majority of these startups launched between 2022 - 2024. This indicates we are still in a relatively early cycle for the adoption of AI Agents. My prediction is, like what we saw with Generative AI, we will see hundreds of startups launching this year having a shot at building something huge.

Where are most of these companies located by country?

The majority of these companies are HQ’d in the U.S, and the U.K. No immediate insights on why however as we know, some of the very best talent are based in these countries which have very strong AI ecosystems which was also highlighted by the British Prime Minister and Elon Musk in a recent interview.

Top Investors

With AI Agents still in the early stages of adoption, it’s no surprise the very early investors are the most active exploring the category such as: YC, Sequoia and Point72 Ventures.

Opportunities for AI Agents

In the future, there will be thousands of platforms that support us on a daily basis. The biggest opportunities I see:

Agents working together to solve new problems (maybe better than us)

Multi-agent collaboration is a cornerstone of modern AI platforms, enabling intelligent systems to work together towards common goals.

We’ll be using AI Agents daily

AI Agents have upsides and downsides. The upside is, they potentially have the ability to make us much more productive across various functions. If I take myself for example, I would use the agents for the following aspects:

Sales: Automate pipeline generation
Research Agents: Support in researching trends for my newsletters
Design Agents: Create digital assets for the newsletters
Legal: Automate legal docs for new customers
Everyday agents: Ask the agents to do all the tasks that aren’t a good use of my time.

And finally, consolidation

How many platforms can and will there be? I’ve personally seen these waves with the creator economy, Web3 and Generative AI. Hundreds of startups launch but if we take the creator economy as an example, not many of them have become a huge success as of yet. Time will tell.

What are your thoughts? Comment on LinkedIn and read what others have to say.

See what others are saying

In the next edition of New Economies, we’ll be sharing how AI Agents are making an impact across various sectors such as E-Commerce, Health, Education and more. Only available for paid subscribers.

New Economies