Howie Liu, the founder and CEO of Airtable, wants you to meet Superagent. This powerful new AI agent will revolutionize automated data analysis as we know it. Superagent, which recently made its public debut, operates semi-independently from Airtable. This is a huge step towards Liu’s vision of promoting multi-agent coordination through the tech industry.
Superagent is led by the original trio behind DeepSky, a consultancy widely recognized for their mastery of artificial intelligence. Our new AI research agent is on a mission to create the most thorough, research-based plan. It will highlight important needs for further research and reveal angles that weren’t even previously considered. This smart move sets Superagent up as a leading contender in the increasingly competitive world of AI agents.
Superagent can easily put specialized agents to work in parallel. That capability enables it to investigate and understand data infinitely faster and more effectively than ever before. Liu believes this innovative model represents “the most value-creative way to run things right now.” Using multiple agents to process data in parallel provides for unique and sometimes unexpected insights. This accelerates the foundation’s decision making capabilities and improves the entire functionality of the platform.
We’re still working through the pricing model on Superagent. Early estimates suggest a starting monthly access fee of $20 per month per user, with prices increasing to the vicinity of $200 for users requiring advanced capabilities. Liu stressed, “We’re not trying to optimize for profit margin at this point in time. This indicates that the priority is on proving Superagent’s worth and functionality before seeking short-term economic gains.
Then, Liu critiques the existing solutions on the market. To that end, he makes a point to criticize some of what are called agents as simply being “LLM powered workflows” and not true agents with autonomous capabilities. What sets Superagent apart is its authentic automation and powerful decision-making AI. We hope it raises an incredibly high bar for the AI tools opening up to everyday users.
And the competitive landscape is getting pretty darn intense. Now companies like Notion and Harvey are rushing to add agent functionalities to their platforms! OpenAI has said it expects to release new agent-building tools by 2025. Together, all these changes could make it much harder for Superagent to enter this market. Despite this competitive landscape, Liu is unshaken in his belief that his product has a shot at widespread adoption.
Airtable itself is in trouble, having recently raised $335 million at a valuation down from $11.7 billion to about $4 billion. The company had an equally eye-numbing $7.7 billion loss in paper valuation. Even after this disappointment, it’s still hiring over 700 people and now opened up access to more than 500,000 non-profits around the globe. Perhaps not surprisingly, 80% of the Fortune 100 companies are included in Airtable’s growing customer base.
As Liu looks ahead to what Superagent will accomplish, he’s optimistic about the door it opens. What if anyone could produce New York Times-quality data visualizations for any task, he mused. His passion for the subject spoke volumes about his commitment to seeing people interact with data in a new way.