CrowdStrike acquires Pangea, builds out its security AI agent portfolio

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

CrowdStrike acquired Pangea and launched Threat AI, a system of AI agents designed to take on cybersecurity and intelligence workflows.

Threat AI falls under the umbrella of CrowdStrike's Agentic Security Workforce, an effort that will inject digital labor throughout its platform. CrowdStrike announced Threat AI and its latest acquisition at its Fal.Con conference.

As for the Pangea acquisition, CrowdStrike said it will use the deal to extend its Falcon platform into AI Detection and Response (AIDR), a category that aims to secure data, models, agents and enterprise AI.

• CrowdStrike acquires Onum, reports strong Q2

CrowdStrike said Pangea will deliver visibility and control of AI agents and workflows, block prompt injection attacks and secure AI development.

Threat AI will include the following:

• Malware Analysis Agent, which automates analyst workflows and can classify, analyze and compare malware.
• Hunt Agent is a proactive threat hunting agent that works across the enterprise.
• CrowdStrike said it will be adding agents for triage, correlation and exposure in the future.

Among other CrowdStrike announcements:

• CrowdStrike launched its Fall release of its Falcon platform that serves as a base for its AI agents.
• The company expanded its agentic tools with in Falcon modules and Charlotte AI AgentWorks, a new no-code AI agent builder.
• CrowdStrike said Agentic Security Workforce is powered by the Falcon Agentic Security Platform.
• The company rolled out a bevy of agents across its modules including Exposure Prioritization Agent, Search Analysis Agent, Correlation Rule Generation Agent, Data Transformation Agent and Workflow Generation Agent.

Microsoft to build quantum center in Maryland

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Microsoft is building a new quantum computing center in Maryland and line up with its work with DARPA on evaluating and funding quantum systems.

In an interview, Charles Tahan, Partner, Microsoft Quantum, said the facility is a partnership with the state of Maryland, which has built a quantum computing corridor built with IonQ as an anchor tenant along with the University of Maryland.

Tahan said the buildout will include substantial lab space for technical work, office space for operations and dedicated zones to collaborate with partners, university students and the broader quantum computing community. "It's a great location for what we want to do," said Tahan. "This will be a place where people can use our technology in a trusted way. It will also help the other side to see if their technology can be compatible with our stack and hopefully push the entire quantum field forward."

• Microsoft rolls out quantum safe plan, timelines
• Microsoft advances quantum computing error correction, sees on-premise traction
• Microsoft unveils Majorana 1, aims to scale quantum computing
• Microsoft launches Quantum Ready Initiative

Microsoft is part of a DARPA program that is evaluating and funding quantum computing development.

The plan for Microsoft is to have its first equipment operational at the new facility by June 2026 with topological qubit test systems. Tahan said the Maryland Microsoft facility could become a potential hub with cloud access to prototype systems from the software giant and partners.

Tahan added that the Maryland center will focus on its topological approach to quantum computing.

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced Majorana One, a quantum processor with a topological architecture designed to scale to 1 million qubits in theory.

Microsoft is taking a platform approach to quantum computing with plans to intersect with artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Microsoft also announced its quantum ready initiative for enterprises to go along with partnerships with Atom Computing and Quantinuum.

Tahan said:

"Microsoft is a platform company, and it's very much true in quantum. We're not only trying to build quantum computers internally, but work with our partners. We're about empowering many companies that our end users really get access to the best technology at any given time."

MongoDB brings full-text search, vector search to on-prem, self-managed versions

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

MongoDB said it will bring its search and vector search tools to MongoDB Community Edition and MongoDB Enterprise Server. The move provides enterprises full-text search and vector search features on MongoDB on-premises and self-managed deployment.

The new capabilities are in public preview for developers. MongoDB announced the news at its MongoDB.local NYC developer conference.

Ben Cefalo, Senior Vice President, Head of Core Products at MongoDB. said adding full-text search and vector search to on-prem, self-managed and local deployments gives developers more flexibility. Ultimately, MongoDB gets a new path to entice enterprises to move to the company's fully managed Atlas platform.

• MongoDB launches effort to modernize legacy data, application layers

Cefalo said in a briefing:

“What we've heard consistently from our community is that integrating advanced search into self-managed application often requires both external search engines or vector databases. This creates friction at every stage, architectural complexities, operational overhead and a constant synchronization task. It distracts developers from their core innovation. We believe they shouldn't have to make the tradeoff.”

Key points:

• MongoDB's decision to move full-text search and vector search tools to on-prem and self-managed options simplify extract, transform and load operations.
• Enterprises won't have to manage multiple versions for additional search tools.
• MongoDB Community Edition and MongoDB Enterprise Server customers will be able to test and build applications locally.
• Developers can combine keywords and vector search in unified results that can be used for AI apps.
• Data in MongoDB can serve as a long-term memory store for AI agents and enhance grounding and RAG systems.

At MongoDB.local NYC, MongoDB also announced the following.

• The launch of MongoDB AI Modernization Platform (AMP).
• MongoDB 8.2 delivers a 49% performance boost for index queries and 10 faster memory reads.
• MongoDB 8.2 will get enhanced Queryable Encryption capabilities.

Google's Agent Payments Protocol fleshes out AI agent commerce

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Google launched the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) in a move that will flesh out how AI agents will handle commerce and transactions. AP2 is an extension of Google's Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol.

While the grand vision of agentic AI is that various agents will carry out tasks for you, commerce was a big sticking point. Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP) and A2A have developed quickly so AI agents can communicate and trade information, but anything revolving money was an issue.

AP2 aims to create a payment framework that can be leveraged by merchants and payment networks. Google said it lined up more than 60 organizations to support AP2 including American Express, Coinbase, Etsy, Intuit, Mastercard, PayPal, Salesforce and ServiceNow to name a few. Visa wasn't initially listed in Google's blog post.

• Agentic AI protocols: MCP and A2A today, many more tomorrow
• OpenAI's support puts MCP in pole position as agentic AI standard
• Microsoft supports Google Cloud's Agent2Agent standard

Google said AP2 will address payment issues around authorization, authenticity and accountability. A user has to give an agent authority to make a purchase and AP2 enables merchants to make sure an agent is accurately making a purchase. There's also protocols for fraudulent and incorrect transactions.

Here are the key points about AP2:

• The system revolves around Mandates, which are "tamper-proof, cryptographically-signed digital contracts that serve as verifiable proof of a user's instructions."
• Mandates address real-time purchases where a human asks an agent to find something. The request is captured in an initial Intent Mandate and then a Cart Mandate for the final purchase.
• Delegated tests will require a detailed Intent Mandate up front to outline rules of engagement.
• Mandates can also specify personalized offers, price bands and details about the purchase.

Constellation Research's take

Constellation analysts chimed in on AP2. Michael Ni said:

"With AP2, Google shifts the center of gravity from last-touch clicks to agent-driven commerce. Intent can now be monetized earlier in the flow, reflecting that ad revenue tied to final-click attribution is at risk. The opportunity lies in redefining how those aggregating buyer interest measure and monetize these new intent entry points."

Holger Mueller noted that AP2 is "allowing agents to do what humans to in a human designed e-commerce world." The big question is whether Microsoft will support it.

Esteban Kolsky added "Google is doing a good job positioning itself as the option for serious AI work with Gemini releases, capacity planning, interfaces, and a bunch of governance related components that no one else is providing." 

Workday spends $1.1 billion on Sana, aims to be front door to work

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Workday has acquired Sana, an AI agent startup that surfaces knowledge in enterprise systems, for $1.1 billion in a bet that the HCM and finance software provider can become "the front door to work."

The news, announced at Workday Rising 2025, touches on a few themes worth noting.

• Workday's Sana acquisition pairs with other announcements such as Workday Data Cloud to telegraph a platform play for the company. Workday's argument that its data on people and money can power a broader AI agent platform.
• There's a healthy debate about how AI agents could upend software. Workday's Sana's purchase gives the company a hedge.
• It's quite possible that AI agents are the new user interface of choice. Sana puts Workday in good position if AI agents are the de facto interface.

Gerrit Kazmaier, president, product and technology at Workday, said Sana's AI-native approach and design chops will help Workday revamp work. "(Sana) will make Workday the new front door for work, delivering a proactive, personalized, and intelligent experience that unlocks unmatched AI capabilities for the workplace," said Kazmaier.

• LLM giants need to build apps, ecosystems to go with the models
• Pondering the future of enterprise software
• Agentic AI: Is it really just about UX disruption for now?

The Workday-Sana vision of work revolves around bringing enterprise knowledge, data and workflows in one place. This front door for work will find answers from various data stores including Workday, Google Drive, SharePoint and Office365, integrate actions, create content and automate workflows.

In addition, Sana has more than 100 connectors to various repositories ranging from Box to Snowflake to SAP and Salesforce. See: AI agents, automation, process mining starting to converge

The big theme with Sana is that Workday is trying to make AI easier, more practical and useful. Workday Executive Chair Aneel Bhusri said:

"People thought AI was going to solve everything, and vendors were out there marketing way ahead of what they had product wise. Vendors have gotten more realistic about delivering solutions to their customers, and, frankly, smarter about what works and what doesn't work. What you'll see from workday and others over the next 12 to 18 months will be real solutions that really help you run your business better and really leverage the power of AI, not just quick fixes."

Here's a look at Sana's UI.

Sana Agents feature search and chat as well as coding tools and automation. Sana also has a learning platform, Sana Learn, that combines learning management, content creation and course generation. Sana Learn will complement Workday Learning with AI tools and personalization.

Kazmaier said during Workday's investor day:

"We think about Sana like the iOS for enterprise in the future. And we see it being like a power combination with Workday because we have incredible distribution. We have 75 million users already. And you can ask 100% expect us to leverage that to bring Sana as an experience to every one of them.

Now the beautiful thing about Sana is that it's not just an incredible enterprise search and enterprise action experience. It also gives us the opportunity to encompass many, many more workflows that people are not doing in Workday today. People engage with Sana today on average 7 times a day in the current form. If we bring this to all of our customers and we open up that AI extensibility for them many things that they are doing today with legacy ticket-based automation, programmed exits, DIY AI systems, they will just naturally fall into this."

Workday has been on a bit of a buying spree of late. In the last 18 months, Workday has acquired the following:

• Sana.
• Paradox.
• Flowise.
• Evisort.
• HiredScore.

Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research, said:

"Workday is on a record acquisition spree, Sana the latest one. At the same time, Workday is radically changing it's data and AI architecture. Here's the question: How will Workday integrate the last three acquisitions? Customers want and need AI asap and Workday needs to deliver fast, while addressing architectural debt and not creating too much new debt."

MongoDB launches effort to modernize legacy data, application layers

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

MongoDB launched MongoDB AMP (Application Modernization Platform) as the vendor becomes the latest to take on enterprise code transformation needed to migrate workloads.

Shilpa Kolhar, SVP of Application Modernization, said MongoDB AMP includes tools and techniques that can move workloads to its Atlas platform. Kolhar argued that MongoDB AMP moves beyond enterprise code transformation. MongoDB announced the news ahead of its MongoDB.local NYC conference. 

"MongoDB AMP is not about throwing the legacy code base into another system that doesn't work. We have tried it. Real applications have large, complex code bases that AI can't directly handle correctly and efficiently," she said. "This is especially true with applications that are centered around stored procedures, where the business logic is spread across the application. Our tooling enables us to break this problem into smaller chunks, smaller pieces, and then work through the code base using an interactive and automated process."

• MongoDB's Q2 shines, company raises its outlook

MongoDB AMP includes a set of agentic workflows that build, test, and repair throughout the conversion process. MongoDB said that combining AMP with its repeatable frameworks have sped up code transformation speed 10x with overall modernization projects sped up 2x to 3x.

There are multiple code transformation efforts that aim to use AI to create AI-native applications. AWS Transform is one of the better known. MongoDB is pitching AI as a code transformation tool with a data layer twist, but it also said enterprises need a more holistic approach that includes analytics, deployment and data migration to name a few.

The win for enterprise vendors is that they can gain workloads while saving customers money on pricey consulting engagements.

MongoDB said MongoDB AMP is built on two years of development with migrating customers. The company cited Australia’s Bendigo Bank, Lombard Odier and IntellectAI as customers that migrated relational databases to MongoDB as well as adjacent code.

Kolhar said:

"With AMP, we are getting into both the database modernization and also the entire application tier of modernization. So, it's not just the database migration alone. We have built tools to support many different combinations of the legacy stack.

We have multiple agents that help with analysis of the code, but we do have some deterministic tools as well. We have AI agents to actually split the code base into chunks that can be recomposed, and then what you're converting in."

Workday launches Workday Data Cloud, Workday Build, more AI agents

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Workday launched Workday Data Cloud, Workday Build as well as a set of Illuminate AI agents as it aims to build a larger ecosystem around its platform.

At Workday Rising, the company rolled out Workday Data Cloud, which puts the human capital management and financial software company in the center of data flows. Workday Data Cloud has zero-copy access to data lakes, data warehouses, applications and business intelligence tools.

Databricks, Salesforce and Snowflake are among the headliner customers. When asked what would make Workday Data Cloud different from other data clouds, Workday CTO Peter Bailis said the company has the "people and money data" that others can build on. SAP is following the same logic with its SAP Business Data Cloud via a partnership with Databricks. 

Workday Data Cloud uses Iceberg to make its platform data open, accessible and AI ready, said Bailis.

The company also outlined Workday Build, which is a set of tools so developers can build on the Workday platform. The tools include Workday Flowise Agent Builder, Extend Apps, Orchestration and connections to Workday Data Cloud. There's also the Workday Marketplace and community tools for developers.

• Workday buys Paradox to build out its recruiting suite, delivers strong Q2
• Workday acquires Flowise to speed up building AI agents, automated workflows
• Workday aims to be system of record for AI agents, digital labor

Workday Rising 2025 builds on the announcements made last year that rounded out Workday as more of a platform play.

"Our strategy is threefold. One, we're building the best AI agents for HR and finance that deliver real business value. Our data has context, and we're deeply embedding AI into HR and finance processes. Second, we're continuing to accelerate investments in our core so we're doubling down on what Workday does best. And finally, we're building an open platform designed for work. We're shifting from the system of record for people and money to a system of action for people and money that understands their customer businesses, understands what they need and helps them reimagine what work gets done," said Bailis.

In addition, Workday scaled out its Illuminate AI agent offerings that aim to bring data and context to business processes. These include the following additions:

• Illuminate HR Agents include a business process copilot, case agent, document intelligence for contingent labor, employee sentiment agent as well as agents for job architecture and performance.
• Illuminate for Finance Agents include AI agents focused on cost and profitability, financial close, and financial scenario testing.
• Illuminate for Industry Agents include agents for academic requirements and student administration.
• Workday said it will soon add Workday Flowise Agent Builder and the Workday Paradox Candidate Experience Agent when the Paradox deal closes.

According to Workday, Illuminate agents will be able to connect to third-party agents including Google Cloud, Salesforce and Microsoft among others. Workday is supporting Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Agent2Agent protocols.

The company also launched Workday Flex Credits so customers can pivot to more consumption based models as AI agents proliferate. There's a set of credits built into subscriptions and as AI agents scale customers can add more credits as usage expands.

SAP S/4HANA Cloud strategy makes headway, says DSAG

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

SAP is making progress with its cloud and AI strategy with customers as enterprises are allocating more budget to S/4HANA Cloud.

That's the high-level takeaway from the latest investment survey from the German-speaking SAP User Group (DSAG). The survey incorporates responses from DSAG members as well as large enterprises that aren't part of the group.

The results were released at the DSAG Annual Congress.

SAP has fleshed out its Business Suite strategy, role of AI and agents as well as migration plans as it prods customers to move to the cloud and a clean data core. DSAG found that 47% of respondents are increasing SAP budgets, up from 46% a year ago.

Yet, there is a good bit of flux. Twenty-three percent of respondents said the SAP budget remains unchanged and 25% said budgets were decreasing, up from 19% a year ago.

• SAP expands sovereign cloud portfolio in Europe
• SAP delivers 24% cloud revenue growth in Q2
• SAP's big plan at Sapphire 2025: Make its Joule AI agent omnipresent
• SAP launches Business Data Cloud, partnership with Databricks: Here's what it means
• SAP launches SAP ERP, private edition, transition option: What you need to know

Jens Hungershausen, DSAG Chairman of the Board, noted that companies are clearly reviewing SAP budgets, but there are multiple factors a play. "Possible reasons could be delays in planned migrations, savings through consolidation of SAP systems or a general reduction in costs," he said.

• Clorox to go live with new SAP ERP system, eyes margin improvement
• Hershey finishes SAP S/4HANA implementation: Is it sweet or suite?

Among the key takeaways from the DSAG Investment Report 2025:

• The use of S/4HANA Private Cloud and S/4HANA Public Cloud is seeing growth. Thirty-three percent of enterprises use S/4HANA Private Cloud, up from 11% a year ago, and 13% use S/4HANA Public Cloud, up from 6% a year ago.
• 42% of enterprises are on S4/HANA on-premises.
• 68% of respondents are planning to invest in S/4HANA Cloud. DSAG noted that the structure of the survey and more large enterprises likely boosted the results.
• 38% of respondents had a positive view of the S/4HANA cloud strategy, up from 13% a year ago.
• 48% of enterprises surveyed are using or plan to use the RISE with SAP program.
• Business Technology Platform is getting the most investment with 40% saying it will get high and medium investments. SAP SuccessFactors was cited by 25% with Signavio at 18%.

"SAP hasn't found the silver bullet to solve it's upgrade problem. Whole AI helped earlier in the year, and it is now back to packaging. The crux remains - S/4HANA does not have the automatic advantages to self entice customers to upgrade. We will see where SAP ends up in 2025," said Holger Mueller, an analyst at Constellation Research. 

AI agents, automation, process mining starting to converge

Larry Dignan

Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights
Constellation Research

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of Constellation Insights at Constellation Research, where he leads editorial coverage focused on enterprise technology, digital transformation, and emerging trends shaping the future of business. He oversees research-driven news, analysis, interviews, and event coverage designed to help technology buyers and vendors navigate complex markets with clarity and context. ...

Read more

Enterprise software vendors appear to be coalescing around the idea that process mining is an enabler for agentic AI and should be built into platforms.

In recent days, process mining, task mining and process automation have all received some play. ServiceNow, which has been acquiring process mining and task mining capabilities as well as partnering with Celonis, has built in more process knowhow into its platform.

ServiceNow acquired UltimateSuite in late 2023 to build out its native process and task mining capabilities. Those capabilities are now included in its Zurich release, which revolves around agentic AI with embedded process automation. Kush Panchbhai, Senior Vice President of AI Platform, Zurich is an effort to give customers the tools to "pivot from legacy automations to proactive automations across all of the workspace" and structured and unstructured data.

The ability to identify inefficiencies via process and task mining is critical because those insights "are then food for our AI agents" to automate with streamlined processes, said Panchbhai. You don’t have to sell me on this process mining meets agentic AI notion. Simply put, I thought agentic AI would just scale process disaster without some kind of optimization in the background.

While ServiceNow’s process efforts are part of the workflow automation continuum, it’s worth noting that other enterprise vendors are onto the idea. Here’s a look at some of the milestones in recent days. Research: Time to Introduce Hi-Fi for Enterprise Processes

Get Constellation Insights newsletter

UiPath: Leveraging RPA and process roots with neutrality

UiPath delivered better-than-expected second quarter results and noted that it is landing larger deals because customers are looking to meld AI, automation, process and orchestration with a neutral vendor.

"With UiPath Maestro, we unify agents, robots and people across systems with governance and transparency so outcomes are measurable and repeatable. This combination is delivering tangible ROI, fueling increasing commercial momentum," said Dines.

Indeed, UiPath's second quarter revenue was $362 million, up 14% from a year ago, and non-GAAP operating income improved to $62 million. It appears that UiPath has emerged from a rough patch. "Since launching our Agentic platform, customers have executed almost 1 million agent runs. Maestro orchestrated over 170,000 process instances, and over 450 customers are actively developing agents," said Dines.

More importantly for UiPath, the company is deepening relationships with customers. Customers with $100,000 or more in ARR increased to 2,432 in the quarter while customers with more than $1 million in ARR came in at 320.

Dines cited Voya Financial a lead customer in the second quarter. Voya automated more than 100 processes and now is targeting more than 40 high-impact use cases in accidental claims with Maestro orchestrating workflows.

Neutrality has its role, according to Dines. "Our key pitch is being really agnostic. I think most of the customers right now are concerned into being completely on one side of a business platform. Because if you look at agentic and orchestration, most of the processes actually spend multiple business systems. You will have to make a choice if you choose an orchestration or an agentic solution that is provided that one of the business systems," he said.

Also see: Hi-Fi process management needs to be foundation for AI | Bloomfilter co-CEO Severinghaus on the intersection of process mining, software development |
Why enterprise, process workflows are the new battleground

SAP: Process mining is a tool for AI adoption

SAP CFO Dominik Asam said he considers process mining to be part of the tooling for AI adoption in the enterprise.

Asam said at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference that the company is selling software but also transformation and AI automation. That transformation also requires some core building blocks.

"If you want to deploy AI, you have to have all the tooling required like process mining, like the enterprise architecture management, also now the in-app guidance of the user to adopt the tools," said Asam. "SAP has a pretty favorable position that we really sit at the nexus of the processes and the data."

SAP has acquired its way into process mining with Signavio and LeanIX. It also has a partnership with UiPath. SAP and Celonis are mired in a court battle over process mining competition.

C3 AI: Process automation part of a comeback?

C3 AI launched the C3 AI Agentic Process Automation. The company bills the launch as the next generation of robotic process automation.

The company has just hired new CEO Stephen Ehikian, who inherited the launch of C3 AI Agentic Process Automation. Like most process mining and AI agent plays, C3 is selling by the process, value and enterprise pain points. C3’s key points include:

• C3 AI Agentic Process Automation focuses on business processes such as “order-to-cash, customer service, invoice processing, debt collection, supplier onboarding, procurement, and employee onboarding, as well as industrial operations such as equipment troubleshooting, manufacturing operations, production planning, inventory management, and aircraft maintenance.”
• The C3 offering is looking to address use cases that used to be addressed by robotic process automation (RPA).
• Now C3 AI Agentic Process Automation is a combination of AI models, predetermined steps and controls with an interactive UI.

Although the company billed C3 AI Agentic Process Automation as a breakthrough what’s being offered rhymes with what UiPath has built. It’s unclear whether C3 AI can leverage its process automation suite to better compete with multiple vendors in the enterprise and Palantir in government accounts.

What’s next?

The working theory is that ServiceNow’s move to highlight process mining and task mining in Zurich will lead to more efforts from rivals.

• For instance, Microsoft acquired Minit in 2022 and talked up process mining and automation for a few quarters after the deal closed. It’s unclear what happened to Minit’s technology, but Microsoft wouldn’t need to do much to embed process into its various AI agent platforms.
• Salesforce, which has a bit of ServiceNow envy these days, has enough time to layer in process mining and automation talk into its Agentforce messaging at its annual Dreamforce conference. Salesforce if it truly wants to be seen as a broad platform for agentic AI—beyond its core service, CRM and marketing clouds—may have to buy its way into the process mining game. Salesforce heads into Dreamforce 2025: A look at the big themes
• Celonis, the big dog in process mining and process intelligence, has its Celosphere conference Nov. 3 to Nov. 5 in Munich. The company has repeatedly noted that process intelligence enables agentic AI, but the market hasn’t bought into it. ServiceNow’s moves with Zurich are likely to give the process mining market a lot more play to the benefit of Celonis.
• UiPath is only looking more valuable in this mix. The company has evolved from RPA to process automation to AI agent orchestration. It’s neutral positioning as a vendor is also valuable. The real kicker with UiPath is that its market cap is between $6 billion and $7 billion depending on the day. UiPath could solve some problems for an enterprise software vendor looking to be an agentic AI platform of choice. Or UiPath could go private. UiPath guided toward fiscal 2026 ARR of $1.82 billion to $1.825 billion and has $1.5 billion in cash with no debt.