McKinsey is testing a “squad” of AI agents
Talk in Silicon Valley is now squarely focused on agents – a type of artificial intelligence that can perform more complex tasks with minimal supervision, such as coding, booking travel, transferring data between various documents and spreadsheets, etc.
Since launching in September, Salesforce’s agent product, Agentforce, has already seen tremendous traction. During the company’s Q3 earnings call, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff shared that they closed 200 Agentforce deals in a week, with thousands more in the pipeline. Early adopters include consulting firms McKinsey and Accenture.
At McKinsey, AI agents already handle client onboarding, including coordinating paperwork, sharing relevant contract details, and running everything by the firm’s departments to get their signoff. The “spaghetti bowl of email threads,” which used to take tens of hours per new client, is done by AI in 30% of the time.
Another consulting application McKinsey is testing is using a “squad” of agents to work together as a team, like human employees, mimicking the various team members assigned to staff a project. Clearly, this could have enormous ramifications.
