AI Agents Updates - TL;DR - 18th May 2025
Big funding, new enterprise tools, and early wins-AI agents get real traction in the boardroom and beyond.
🕑 30-Second Snapshot
This week saw three significant AI agent funding rounds totaling $23.2M, with Stack AI's $16M Series A leading the pack. NTT DATA unveiled an enterprise-grade AI Agent ecosystem, while Google is reportedly developing a new agent platform. PwC's survey revealed 88% of executives plan to increase AI budgets, with 66% of early adopters already seeing productivity gains and 73% believing agents will deliver competitive advantage in the next year.
Job Opening:
📈 Momentum Meter
Funding: ▲▲ ($16M Stack AI, $6M Adopt AI, $1.2M ThriveAI in just one week)
Enterprise Pilots: ▲ (NTT DATA's Smart AI Agent™ Ecosystem, 66% of adopters reporting productivity gains)
Open-Source Launches: ➖ (No major releases this week)
Policy / Ethics: ▲ (New guidance on UK/EU compliance for agentic AI published May 15)
🚀 Rapid Round-Up
Stack AI × Raises $16M Series A × Funding will deploy AI agents that can "perform any job" in enterprise companies, targeting the 82% of global firms exploring AI integration. 🔗
Adopt AI × Secures $6M seed round led by Elevation Capital × Silicon Valley-based startup's platform enables businesses to integrate agent capabilities into applications in under 24 hours, dramatically reducing the months typically required for in-house development. 🔗
NTT DATA × Unveils Smart AI Agent™ Ecosystem × Comprehensive enterprise-grade solution offers industry-specific agent packages with a patented plug-in to transform legacy RPA bots into intelligent agents. 🔗
Google × Developing software AI agent platform × Tech giant preparing to showcase new agent capabilities at upcoming conference, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape. 🔗
ThriveAI × Raises $1.2M pre-seed for product management agents × Ex-Google founders building AI teammates that act as junior product managers, freeing senior PMs from administrative tasks. 🔗
Cohere × Doubles revenue to $100M annualized × Growth signals enterprise demand for secure, customizable AI solutions as adoption accelerates. 🔗
🔍 Deep Dives
Funding & Market Moves
This week saw significant capital flowing into AI agent startups across various funding stages. Stack AI secured $16M in Series A funding to accelerate their vision of deploying AI agents that can "perform any job" in enterprise companies. Adopt AI raised $6M in seed funding led by Elevation Capital to strengthen its engineering teams and go-to-market strategy for its platform that helps businesses integrate agent capabilities into applications within 24 hours. ThriveAI emerged from stealth with a $1.2M pre-seed round led by 500 Global, targeting AI agents that function as junior product managers. Meanwhile, Cohere doubled its annualized revenue to $100M through May 2025, indicating strong enterprise demand for secure, customized AI solutions. PwC's survey of 300 senior executives found 88% plan to increase AI-related budgets, highlighting growing market confidence despite 46% expressing concerns about falling behind competitors.
Shipped Capabilities
NTT DATA unveiled its Smart AI Agent™ Ecosystem this week, offering industry-specific solutions with assured outcomes. The platform includes a patented plug-in solution that transforms existing RPA bots into intelligent agents, allowing companies to leverage their automation investments while adding AI capabilities. The company also announced the establishment of an OpenAI Center of Excellence to accelerate Smart AI Agent development. Google is reportedly developing a new software AI agent platform ahead of its annual conference, signaling the tech giant's push into the competitive AI agent market. In financial services, Inscribe highlighted four AI agent capabilities gaining traction: document categorization and extraction, AI-powered multi-channel communication, data enrichment across fragmented sources, and natural language analytics queries - all automating tasks that previously consumed significant human analyst time.
New Use-Cases & Case Studies
PwC's May 2025 survey reveals early adopters of AI agents are seeing tangible benefits: 66% report increased productivity, 57% cite cost savings, 55% experience faster decision-making, and 54% note improved customer experience. ThriveAI is pioneering a novel use case where AI agents act as junior product managers, handling grunt work like flagging issues, synthesizing data, and cataloguing information through Slack and Teams integrations. Financial services firms are deploying agents for four key functions: document processing, customer communications, data enrichment, and natural language analytics - with Inscribe noting these capabilities "empower teams to work smarter, not just harder". ML6 is leveraging AI agents for M&A activities, including understanding niche business landscapes, expanding professional networks, bi-directional deal sourcing, and due diligence support - addressing the challenge of finding "needles in haystacks" of transaction data.
Tooling & Infra Arms-Race
Stack AI is focusing on three core pillars in its AI agent platform: simplicity (reducing time-to-value for non-technical users), capacity (enhancing retrieval quality and tool access), and support (developing resources for AI adoption). Their approach emphasizes enabling functional leaders to design optimal agents without deep technical expertise. NTT DATA's Smart AI Agent™ Ecosystem provides end-to-end services from advisory to agent management, with a notable plug-in that transforms legacy RPA bots into AI agents. Adopt AI's Agent Builder offers a no-code solution that enables companies to build, launch and monitor agent experiences for in-house applications within 24 hours by automatically learning company systems and generating appropriate actions. The upcoming Future of Data and AI Conference (May 27-28) will feature panels on agent architecture innovations including "ReAct, Reflection, and AutoGPT-inspired agents" alongside discussions on planning methods, memory systems, and tool integration frameworks.
💡 Startup to Watch
ThriveAI is reimagining product management with AI agents that act as junior PMs. Founded by former Google product leads Ishwar Dhanuka and Brian Ngo, the startup just secured $1.2M in pre-seed funding from 500 Global, Iterative, and Hustle Fund. ThriveAI's agents integrate with Slack and Microsoft Teams to flag issues, synthesize data, and take over administrative work that typically bogs down senior product managers. Rather than replacing humans, these agents act as teammates that handle the repetitive tasks, allowing senior PMs to focus on creative, high-value projects. The team's immediate focus is on expanding capabilities while "prioritizing reliability over novelty" to make their agents trusted teammates.
🔢 Numbers That Popped
88% of 300 senior executives surveyed by PwC plan to increase AI-related budgets in the next 12 months, revealing widespread enterprise commitment despite economic uncertainty.
73% of business leaders believe their AI agent strategy will deliver significant competitive advantage in the coming year, yet 46% worry they're falling behind competitors in adoption.
66% of companies using AI agents report increased productivity, with majority also seeing cost savings (57%), faster decision-making (55%), and improved customer experience (54%).
24 hours is how quickly Adopt AI's platform can integrate intelligent agent capabilities into business applications, versus "months to build in-house".
👀 Worth the Click / Listen / Watch
Read:
PwC's AI Agent Survey - Provides data on adoption rates, benefits, and competitive advantages from 300 senior executives.
Demystifying AI Agents in 2025 - Clear breakdown of market outlook, player categories, and strategic considerations for the next 6-12 months.
Agentic AI: UK/EU Compliance Guide - Essential regulatory guidance for businesses deploying autonomous AI systems.
Watch:
Build Your Own AI Agents with Microsoft 365 Copilot - Step-by-step tutorial on creating no-code agents in Microsoft's ecosystem, from creation to sharing.
⏭️ On the Radar (Next 7 Days)
Future of Data and AI: Agentic AI Conference (May 27-28) - Expert panels on agent architectures, planning methods, memory systems, and trustworthiness featuring speakers from LlamaIndex, Weaviate, and other leaders.
Google's annual conference expected to showcase their new software AI agent platform, potentially reshaping the competitive landscape for enterprise AI adoption.
SearchUnify's detailed breakdown of the top 5 enterprise AI agent platforms of 2025 will be expanded with additional implementation guidance next week.
🧠 Cheat-Sheet Glossary
Agentic AI - AI systems designed to act autonomously toward specific goals, making decisions and taking actions with varying degrees of human oversight.
Agent Builder - No-code tool that allows non-technical users to create, configure and deploy AI agents for specific business processes5.
Multi-agent systems - Collaborative networks of AI agents that work together to solve complex problems, each specializing in different tasks or knowledge domains.
AI Agent Ecosystem - Comprehensive framework including agent development tools, deployment infrastructure, governance controls, and integration capabilities.