PwC launches “agent OS” a new platform for AI agents to interact.
Agent OS ensures agents won’t operate like “ships passing in the night” PwC exec Matt Wood told BI.
Big 4 professional services firms from Deloitte to EY are revving up investment in AI agents.
PwC wants to help your AI agents talk to each other.
The professional services firm has been building and deploying AI agents for the past nineteen months for different clients, operating separately. In that time, leadership has noticed agents often operate “like ships passing in the night,” Matt Wood, PwC’s global and US commercial technology and innovation officer, told Business Insider.
PwC doesn’t think silent communication will work in the AI era. Its goal, Wood said, is “moving them from ships that pass in the night to being an armada that’s working together.”
On Thursday, PwC unveiled “agent OS,” a new platform it describes as a “switchboard” for enterprise AI. It lets companies build agents, customize them, and connect them to each other to automate complex tasks.
PwC said in a press release agent OS is built for a world where companies are developing AI agents in a variety of ways, whether they’re embedding them as features within platforms, as standalone applications, or as highly specialized agents built on proprietary or open-source software.
Agent OS integrates with systems from Anthropic to Google Cloud to Microsoft Azure, the company said. Users can test workflows directly in agent OS and integrate them into systems their teams or customers are already working with, Wood said.
So, a marketing executive at a retail company could speed through a new ad campaign by connecting creative generation agents built through OpenAI with testing agents on Google Cloud and analytics agents from Salesforce.
PwC said that once the platform is up and running in a client’s environment, they can roll out multi-agent solutions in just a couple of weeks.
Agents have taken center stage this year as companies bet on their potential to liberate their workforces. This form of AI technology can execute tasks autonomously, constantly learn from its environment, and troubleshoot when necessary.
Consulting firms especially have invested heavily into building agentic solutions for themselves and clients. This month, Deloitte launched Zora AI, a suite of specialized agents it says can execute tasks across domains from finance and procurement. EY, too, introduced the EY.ai Agentic Platform which it says will assist workers in the firm’s tax division with tasks like data collection, document analysis and review, and income and indirect tax compliance.
