If the AI world is starting to feel like the end of a mafia movie lately, it’s because agents are surrounding your workplace.

Adobe and Zoom are the latest enterprise players to debut generative AI systems that can perform day-to-day office tasks beyond simply summarizing or answering questions.

While Adobe has rolled out plenty of visual generation AI tools in the last couple of years, its new stable of 10 agents will supplement its digital marketing business, Adobe Experience Cloud. Their respective modi operandi include optimizing websites, building audiences, or managing data. The orchestrator tools coordinate and route jobs to the agents, and let companies integrate third-party agents.

Meanwhile, Zoom is adding agentic functionality to its existing AI Companion, which can already summarize meetings and pull data from emails. With the new skills, AI Companion, “using reasoning and memory,” will soon be able to better manage calendars, draft meeting agendas, or detect action items from workplace communications, the company said in its announcement.

Adobe and Zoom join a growing gaggle of companies that are looking to these sorts of agentic tools as the next era of generative AI adoption in offices. Microsoft, Salesforce, SAP, and Oracle are among many others. But “agent” can be a slippery term; different companies might conceive of it in different ways, though most agree an agent must be able to perform tasks and interact with an outside environment.

Keep reading here.—PK

Ford’s commercial vehicle business is betting on the future being defined by data and software.

To that end, Ford Pro recently reported a more than 40% increase since 2023 in the number of connected commercial vehicles its customers have on the road, to 5.2 million. Executives view connectivity as an opportunity to help commercial customers manage the transition to EVs, boost uptime, reduce costs, and use data-driven insights to better manage their fleets.

And such capabilities present opportunities to generate new revenue streams from a business that already plays an outsize role in Ford’s financials: Last year, Ford Pro generated $9 billion in earnings, posted a 13.5% margin, and saw revenue grow 15% YoY to nearly $67 billion. The business unit’s paid software subscriptions jumped 27% to nearly 650,000 subscribers.

“Going from descriptive to prescriptive is the next phase of connected vehicles,” Dave Prusinski, chief revenue officer for Ford Pro Integrated Services, told Tech Brew, “and that’s where Ford is going very, very quickly.”

Keep reading here.—JG

Pop quiz: What do energy experts and some House Republicans currently have in common? They’re both advocating for an all-of-the-above energy approach to meet the United States’ rising power demand.

A new US National Power Demand study from S&P Global Commodity Insights commissioned by multiple energy entities, including the American Clean Power Association and the American Petroleum Institute, found that to satisfy the “record electricity demand growth over the next decade,” renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy will need to be used, along with resources like batteries. This conclusion echoes that of other energy researchers and a letter sent by 21 House Republicans earlier this month underscoring the importance of using nonrenewables and clean energy to respond to energy demand.

Over the next 15 years, the study said, the US’s needs could increase up to 50% as a result of data centers, electric vehicles and heating, and “underlying economic growth.” And that demand can be solved by a diverse supply of energy—specifically, more than 900 gigawatts of renewable power and batteries alongside 60 to 100 gigawatts of gas power.

“A diversified portfolio of generation technologies will be needed to ensure planning reserve margins are met and grid reliability is maintained,” the study noted.

Keep reading here.—TC

Usually, we write about the business of tech. Here, we highlight the *tech* of tech.

Searching for something new: We’ve written about search engine Kagi here before. We’re total Kagi stans. The Verge’s David Pierce appears to be of the same opinion: “I’m still using Kagi, and it’s hard to imagine switching back,” he writes. “It’s now Google that looks bizarre and unfamiliar every time I open it. As Google has become more visual, more chaotic, and consistently less good at simply finding the things I’m looking for, Kagi has stayed simple and straightforward. It is a page full of links, and they’re usually the right ones.”

Cough up $10 a month and reform your search life. All the cool kids are doing it.

Tiny tech: As any new parent quickly discovers, babies are just small people, with preferences and gripes and wants and needs. There’s no silver bullet, no magic technological solution for getting your baby to sleep. Some of ’em simply aren’t big on sleeping.

The New York Times’s Brian X. Chen walks through the baby-oriented tech products he tested out—some that helped, and others that his baby swiftly and resoundingly rejected. A tale as old as time.

More people are taking surveys on mobile—are your questions optimized for it? On March 27, SurveyMonkey’s latest webinar will uncover the best question types, how mobile affects survey accuracy, and ways to engage modern respondents. Don’t miss out on these insights!