Databricks Upgrades Genie Into Always-On AI Agent for Business Leaders

Databricks has released an updated version of its AI agent Genie that can carry out multistep, extended tasks without supervision, drawing on an ontology the company built to give the agent context from customer data stored on its platform.

CEO Ali Ghodsi demonstrated how he uses Genie internally, showing how it analysed weak areas in an employee satisfaction survey, helped him assess and reject proposed fixes from executives, summarised a sales pitch that went poorly along with the features the prospect wanted, and prepared him for a podcast interview by reviewing past appearances.

Ghodsi said Genie gives him candid insights he is unlikely to hear directly as head of a 12,000-person company. He pointed to Dunbar’s number, the theory from British anthropologist Robin Dunbar that people can maintain stable relationships with about 150 others, and said any organisation larger than that could benefit from AI agents like Genie.

Databricks is now positioning Genie as an always-on agent for business leaders, with Ghodsi saying it can do for the business side what AI agents and harnesses are doing for programmers. He added that companies can control agent costs through Databricks’ Unity Gateway, which sets usage limits and allows cheaper open-weight models to be swapped in.