Greetings,
As many of you know, on Tuesday we launched Deep Research, a powerful new feature for our Pro users. We created Deep Research to answer the toughest business questions, faster than ever, and it's already set to redefine how you approach information gathering. Understanding the nuances of new technologies, especially in rapidly evolving fields like AI Agents, is more critical than ever.
To illustrate Deep Research's unique capabilities, I decided to put it to the test. Aaron Holmes recently published a fascinating article, The Seven Kinds of AI Agents," which explores the diverse applications and technological backbone of this burgeoning field. To demonstrate Deep Research's power, I asked a truly challenging question: "Who has the edge right now in the market for AI Agents?"
What it delivered was far from a simple answer, but rather a sophisticated, multi-layered analysis that laid out the competitive landscape with remarkable clarity. This is where Deep Research shines: it doesn't just give you facts; it helps you understand the dynamics. I thought what it came back with in response to my question was profound:
"To say one company has the definitive edge would be to ignore the complex power dynamics at play. The competition is better understood as a battle for control over different, crucial layers of the agent technology stack and its distribution."
Deep Research's analysis broke down the complex market into key battlegrounds:
-
Foundation Model Builders (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) These companies hold the technological advantage in creating the sophisticated reasoning models, acting as the "brains" behind agents.
-
Enterprise Software Incumbents (e.g., Salesforce, Microsoft) Leveraging millions of existing customers and deep workflow integrations, they are rapidly embedding agents into their established product suites.
-
Cloud Providers (e.g., AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud) These giants are locked in a foundational war over the infrastructure that makes it easiest and most cost-effective to build, deploy, and manage agents at scale.
I believe Deep Research will become an indispensable tool for anyone seeking a true competitive edge in understanding complex markets and industries.
Best,
Jessica Lessin
Founder & Editor-in-Chief
The term “agent” or “agentic” has become so ubiquitous in the business world that it can now seem to mean everything or nothing at all.
In its simplest form, an agent is artificial intelligence that handles multistep tasks without requiring a human to steer it the whole time. In other words, an agent goes beyond what the basic version of ChatGPT can do.
In the past year, AI firms have launched agents that appear in stand-alone apps, as sidebars or add-ons in existing apps, or as dialog boxes on webpages. As the table below shows, you’re now likely to encounter seven types of AI agents in the wild as a consumer, where they may aim to resolve your customer support complaints without requiring a human employee, or in the workplace, where they handle tasks like processing human resources forms or resolving IT tickets.
