Writer's AI agents automate complex business workflows for enterprises.

2 hours ago7 min read

Writer, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, has launched a unified AI agent platform that fundamentally redefines enterprise automation by enabling any employee to automate complex business workflows without writing a single line of code. This strategic move positions Writer directly against consumer-oriented tools like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, emphasizing a core distinction: while others focus on individual productivity, Writer Agent combines chat-based assistance with autonomous task execution in a single interface designed for organizational-scale impact.Enterprise customers can now use natural language to instruct the AI to create presentations, analyze financial data, generate comprehensive marketing campaigns, or coordinate actions across multiple business systems like Salesforce, Slack, and Google Workspace. Crucially, these multi-step processes can be saved as reusable 'Playbooks' that run automatically on schedules, transforming ad-hoc tasks into systematic, repeatable operations.This launch arrives at a critical juncture, as enterprises globally struggle to transition AI initiatives from isolated pilot programs into full-scale production. Writer CEO May Habib has been vocal about this systemic challenge, recently citing a company survey where 42% of Fortune 500 executives admitted that AI is 'tearing their company apart' due to profound coordination failures between departments.The platform's core innovation lies in its radical accessibility for non-technical employees—what company executives term 'democratizing who gets to be a builder. ' In a detailed demonstration, Doris Jwo, Writer's director of product management, showed how a simple English request like 'Create a two-page partnership proposal between Company A and Company B, make it a branded deck, include impact metrics and partnership tiers' triggers the AI agent to decompose the task into discrete steps, conduct web research, generate graphics and charts dynamically, create individual slides with sourced information, and assemble a complete presentation—a process that might traditionally take hours or days is compressed into 10-12 minutes.This technical capability is underpinned by what Matan-Paul Shetrit, Writer's director of product management, describes as an 'enterprise-ready' architecture built around 'trust, security, and interoperability. ' Unlike offerings from research labs turned enterprise vendors, Writer was designed from its 2020 founding specifically for Fortune 500 requirements, featuring granular controls where IT administrators can precisely regulate AI access—preventing market research agents from mentioning competitors, restricting web search capabilities by employee role, and maintaining detailed audit trails of all agent activity.The platform's technical foundation leverages the emerging Model Context Protocol (MCP) for system integrations but adds a proprietary enterprise layer, with pre-built connectors to more than a dozen critical applications including Snowflake, Asana, Gong, HubSpot, Atlassian, Databricks, PitchBook, and FactSet. A distinctive technical feature is the system's ability to write and execute code on-the-fly to handle unexpected scenarios, such as processing unfamiliar file formats without human intervention.Real-world implementations already demonstrate transformative potential: mortgage lender New American Funding automates marketing workflows where the AI executes tasks like updating email campaigns or transforming articles into social media content, while financial services teams create investment dashboards using PitchBook and FactSet data. The platform is powered by Palmyra X5, Writer's proprietary large language model featuring a one-million-token context window—among the largest commercially available—trained for approximately $700,000 using synthetic data and efficiency-focused techniques that represent a fraction of the estimated $100 million OpenAI spent on GPT-4.Perhaps most significantly, Writer's approach emphasizes transparency in AI decision-making, displaying step-by-step reasoning that shows which data sources were accessed, what code was generated, and how outputs were determined—a 'superset of observability' that enables not just monitoring but active control through policies and permissions. With all new capabilities included in the base platform without additional charges, and a client roster that has expanded to include TikTok, Comcast, Keurig Dr Pepper, CAA, and Aptitude Health alongside existing customers like Accenture, Qualcomm, Uber, Vanguard, and Marriott, Writer now serves over 300 enterprises with more than $50 million in signed contracts and projections to double that to $100 million this year.The company's remarkable 160% net retention rate indicates that customers are significantly expanding their usage, with twenty clients who began with $200,000-$300,000 contracts now spending approximately $1 million annually. This growth trajectory, supported by a $1.9 billion valuation from a November 2024 funding round that raised $200 million from investors including Premji Invest, Radical Ventures, ICONIQ Growth, Salesforce Ventures, and Adobe Ventures, validates Writer's core thesis: that serving Fortune 500 companies from inception creates architectural advantages that research labs cannot easily replicate. As the competitive landscape intensifies with Microsoft and Google leveraging enormous distribution advantages through existing enterprise relationships, and OpenAI and Anthropic continuing to produce breakthrough models, Writer's success will ultimately depend on whether purpose-built enterprise platforms can outperform adapted consumer tools at delivering reliable, compliant, and measurable business impact across thousands of employees.The company frames this vision as enabling 'vibe working'—extending the productivity gains seen in 'vibe coding' to non-technical knowledge workers—positioning 2026 as the year when describing a better way to work becomes equivalent to building it. In a market where an estimated 85% of AI initiatives fail to escape pilot purgatory, Writer is betting that the ultimate winners won't be the companies with the most powerful models, but those that make AI actually work inside the complex, regulated, and interconnected reality of global enterprise operations.

#Writer AI

#AI agents

#workflow automation

#enterprise software

#generative AI

#featured

#business productivity

#AI platforms

#Palmyra X5

Stay Informed. Act Smarter.

Get weekly highlights, major headlines, and expert insights — then put your knowledge to work in our live prediction markets.