The Ultimate Guide to AI Agents
A curated Kiwi edition of IndustrialDay news, analysis, interviews, reviews, job moves, and related resources for AI Agents (Agentic AI).
What to know about AI Agents
AI agents represent a transformative area within artificial intelligence, focusing on autonomous or semi-autonomous systems capable of performing complex tasks and making decisions to enhance business operations and personal productivity.
Our recent stories highlight how AI agents are rapidly evolving across sectors—from cybersecurity and data management to customer experience and enterprise automation. Companies are integrating AI agents to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and manage security risks in increasingly sophisticated ways.
By exploring these developments, readers can gain insights into the potential benefits, emerging applications, and challenges associated with AI agent deployment. Whether you're interested in how AI agents enhance software development, automate workflows, or secure enterprise environments, this tag offers a comprehensive look at this dynamic and impactful technology.
Kiwi AI Agents News
Regional stories with direct local relevance
Assurity Consulting puts quality at core of AI push
Reliable AI adoption is becoming a competitive issue, with the consultancy warning firms that quality checks must be built in from the start.
New Zealand firms race ahead with AI despite data gaps
Despite weak data foundations, 65 per cent of local organisations are already running AI projects, while many cannot measure success effectively.
AI boosts value of experienced developers, says Lancom CTO
AI has made prototypes cheap, but production failures remain costly, putting a premium on experienced developers who can spot hidden risks.
NZ firms need better systems before scaling AI, Reframr
Only 2% of New Zealand organisations see themselves as AI teamwork leaders, as most spending still favours technology over people.
Halter's Clank AI cuts engineering time in farm tech
Farming customers could see faster fixes as the system now handles alert triage and code changes, saving more than 215 engineering hours.
New Zealand firms split on AI as strategy gap widens
Only 15% of New Zealand businesses have an AI strategy, leaving most unable to measure returns or prepare for the next wave of tools.
Analyst Insights
Research and market analysis connected to AI Agents
Boomi named Gartner Visionary for AI agent platform
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Denodo named Gartner leader for seventh year in row
Gartner flags 10 tech trends for 2027 as AI governance
PagerDuty launches Paige AI agent & PD Labs in ANZ
Gigamon unveils tools to track shadow AI across networks
Featured News
Smartsheet tackles execution drift in the age of AI agents
As AI agents speed up operations, firms are struggling to spot when day-to-day work drifts away from strategy and targets.
Palo Alto Networks: Frontier AI brings more attacks, faster
Frontier AI isn't inventing new attacks, says Palo Alto Networks' Wendi Whitmore, but it is making old ones far faster and more frequent.
Oracle Fusion AI: Autonomy is earned, one outcome at a time
Oracle's Kaushal Kurapati says the pace of AI development is surpising even to those driving it.
Sectigo targets ANZ growth as certificate lifespans shrink
Shorter certificate lifespans are pushing Australian and New Zealand firms to automate renewals, or face higher security and outage risks.
Oracle NetSuite: Trust AI the way you'd trust a new hire
Oracle NetSuite's Brian Chess says trust is earned and built over time and through experience. That doesn't change when agentic AI is involved.
Twilio evolves from APIs to conversational trust
As AI agents proliferate, Twilio is focusing on trusted, governed communications infrastructure rather than the apps that sit on top of it.
Oracle's racers: AI removes the grind, increases focus
Oracle Red Bull Racing and SailGP provide insights into AI's relentless incursion into the world of human performance.
Scaling AI means reinventing how work gets done
The shift could reshape hiring, audits and pay as firms move from AI pilots to automated workflows that rely on new guardrails.
Workday is a Fortune 500 startup reborn for the AI era
Its AI-first overhaul has cut layers, sped product cycles and left the company betting that startup-style speed can still serve Fortune 500 customers.
UST: Businesses must rethink how AI returns are measured
Australian firms risk spending increasing resources on AI pilots that ultimately fail to prove gains in revenue, efficiency or customer service.
Celonis banking head: Banks want proof before scaling agents
Celonis argues frontier AI models are too generic for regulated banking, urging firms to weigh cost, risk and process gains before scaling deployments.
Interview: Cloudera says AI agents reshape zero trust
Enterprises must update identity controls as software agents generate more requests and need tightly time-limited access to sensitive systems.
Zscaler takes zero trust beyond the corporate network
Critical infrastructure operators are using cellular links to secure distributed assets as outages and spoofing raise the stakes for resilience.
Workiva: The secret compliance and reporting arms race
Driven by improved tooling, finance teams are meeting higher standards as regulators and analysts scrutinise disclosures faster.
Filigran: Does your CISO know enough?
CISOs are under pressure to answer boardroom questions on exposure in minutes, as Filigran pushes CTEM and open-source validation tools.
Exclusive: ABBYY says AI build costs will drive buying
Enterprises could cut AI spend by up to 80% by shifting document workflows away from custom builds and into standard platforms.
Exclusive: ABBYY brings zero-shot document AI to Vantage
Enterprises can now extract data from unseen document types without templates, as ABBYY rolls out zero-shot capabilities in Vantage.
Interview: Cloudera bets on hybrid AI growth in JAPAC
Banks and large enterprises in Asia-Pacific are rethinking cloud-first AI plans as costs, sovereignty and regulation favour hybrid deployments.
AI transforms CX to go beyond the chatbot
Consumers now expect faster, more automated support as AI agents handle complex customer journeys, though many firms still struggle to prove ROI.
Open source is powering the next generation of frontier AI
Rising inference demand and custom hardware needs are pushing AI infrastructure beyond standard cloud setups, boosting open source tools.
Governance controls are crucial for AI adoption and modernisation
Trusted partners and tighter guardrails are becoming essential as AI agents expand the attack surface and put data sovereignty on the line.
Exclusive: Cloudera builds Hadoop-free future platform
Existing customers get six years of support as Cloudera shifts new AI and analytics workloads to a Hadoop-free platform due in November.
Mimecast CEO: Agentic AI threat novel but not entirely new
Hidden AI risks are already widespread in workplaces, with Mimecast saying users are driving shadow tools and most exposure still starts with people.
Rimini Street offers AI magic without the forced ERP migration
CIOs can keep existing ERP systems and still adopt agentic AI, as Rimini Street pitches a cheaper path away from vendor-led migrations.
Customers at the centre of Adobe's new AI evangelist role
Adobe is using the post to help customers navigate AI adoption while feeding regional priorities back into its global product strategy.
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Apple's Unified Memory powers Kiraa AI's rapid automation
Australian firms can speed month-end processing from days to an hour by running Kiraa AI on Macs instead of costly cloud servers.
Jamf launches AI Governance to enhance visibility, security
IT teams can now track AI models on Apple fleets to curb data leaks and token spend as businesses wrestle with shadow AI.
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AI models expose new attack surfaces through misconfiguration
Misconfigured models are giving attackers a fresh route into cloud systems, raising the risk of data theft and service compromise.
Zendesk's outcome-based pricing balances AI with human touch
Businesses will pay only for closed support cases under Zendesk's new model, as the software group ties AI automation to human fallback.
AI will fade, says Dell Technologies' ephemeral Chief AI Officer
Dell says agentic AI should shift routine tasks below the machine line, freeing staff for expert work while making the role temporary.
Schrodinger's ERP both dead and alive, says Rimini Street
Businesses can avoid costly ERP rip-and-replace projects by layering AI and automation onto existing systems, Rimini Street says.
ClickHouse customer base soars on back of AI demand
AI agents are driving a sharp rise in demand for the real-time data platform, which added 1000 customers early in 2026 to top 4000.
Reviews
Expert Columns
AI agents will multiply your inference bill. Is your enterprise ready?
Security Learnings from the Open Source Front Line
How Local Agentic AI Is Coming to Business PCs
Nexxen's 2027 APAC Predictions: Four Shifts Set to Reshape TV and Digital Advertising
Shadow AI Is Creating an Unmanaged Identity Crisis Across APAC
It's time to embrace our robot overlords
Data Governance in the AI Era: Why One-Off Projects Fail
AI in Retail is Only as Good as its Data Foundation
AI isn't the problem, Australia's natural resources industry needs business orchestration
Building Infrastructure for an AI World in Motion
Interviews
Interviews and video coverage from the networkRecent AI Agents News
Genesys expands AI engineers to speed customer rollouts
By tackling integration and governance hurdles, the new engineering model aims to help enterprises move agentic AI customer service projects into production faster.
eCloudvalley renews AWS pact to push enterprise AI
The renewed pact will help the Singapore provider move enterprise AI products into more markets across Asia-Pacific as AWS backs joint development.
NVIDIA launches Minerva to spot AI factory faults early
The software aims to cut downtime and boost output for operators of massive GPU clusters by turning event storms into likely root causes.
1Password launches sign-in tool for personal AI agents
The move could let users approve AI logins without exposing passwords, as 1Password bets secure access will shape adoption of personal agents.
Google Cloud unveils Agent Compute Engine for AI agents
The new service aims to make AI agents faster to start, cheaper to run and safer to isolate as cloud demand shifts beyond chatbots.
Kyndryl & AWS launch modernisation service for firms
Many organisations are lagging on technology upgrades, and the new Kyndryl and AWS offer is meant to cut the risk of large-scale modernisation.
Google Cloud launches AI agent engine & governance
Enterprises can now run autonomous AI agents with tighter isolation and governance as Google Cloud expands controls across its own services and other environments.
Compliance teams risk fines when skipping AI checks
Teams using unverified AI guidance are far more likely to be fined, with 37% of those skipping expert review reporting a penalty, survey data show.
Ransomware attacks jump 23% as industrial firms hit
Industrial firms bore the brunt as ransomware incidents climbed 23% in the third quarter, with North America also hit hard.
Tracebit says context bombs cut AI attack success 91%
Tracebit's research suggests deception can sharply slow AI-driven intrusions, lifting attacker costs 23-fold while cutting completed objectives by 91%.
Red Hat & NVIDIA expand AI Factory with agent controls
Enterprises deploying autonomous AI agents may gain tighter safeguards as the two firms add runtime controls, governed inference and day-zero hardware support.
Illumio warns AI authority is outpacing security controls
Most firms now hand AI decisions once reserved for staff, but fewer than half can fully audit its actions, a new survey found.
Forrester says AI will shape 75% of B2B buys by 2027
Providers may need to overhaul sales and marketing as AI agents are set to influence 75% of B2B purchase decisions by 2027.
Google Cloud now adds OpenAI models to Model Garden
Enterprise customers will be able to compare and switch models by cost and performance on one invoice, intensifying cloud rivalry over AI access.
Elastic moves Jina AI models to faster NVIDIA GPUs
Customers could see faster search and AI responses, with some Elastic Jina models running up to 8x quicker after a shift to NVIDIA RTX Pro 6000 GPUs.
CrowdStrike launches tools to detect risky AI agents
The tools are designed to spot rogue AI behaviour and simulate attacks before autonomous systems can reach critical data or systems.
Adobe puts CX Enterprise Coworker inside AI assistants
Marketers can now manage campaigns and customer journeys inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot as Adobe widens its AI reach.
JFrog adds AI security controls for developer tools
Security teams can now spot unauthorised AI tools on developer machines before they reach production, as JFrog extends its controls.
Hackers abuse trusted AI tools to breach organisations
Attackers are abusing approved AI and admin tools to move through networks in minutes, making traditional trust-based defences far less reliable.
Thoughtworks urges tighter controls as AI agents spread
Companies are being pushed to secure, monitor and budget for AI systems as agents take on longer tasks and strain review processes.
