The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the business landscape through two transformative trends: Vertical AI and Enterprise Agentic AI. Although both serve distinct purposes, together, they signal a future where businesses operate more efficiently and employee roles and customer experiences are redefined.
Transforming Traditional Industries with Vertical AI
Vertical AI transforms traditional industries and value chains by offering specialized, AI-driven solutions for markets such as insurance, manufacturing, and healthcare. Historically, these industries have experienced limited digital adoption, leading to significant amounts of fragmented, incomplete, and challenging-to-analyze data trapped in separate systems. Recent technological advancements now facilitate the analysis of this data—including unstructured data—and its use to tackle complex tasks. This breakthrough creates substantial opportunities for productivity gains, empowering humans with the support of intelligent problem-solving machines.
Healthcare, for example, offers significant opportunities for productivity gains through enhanced administrative efficiency. Emerging companies like Affineon improve patient care and increase doctor productivity by managing providers’ inboxes, while Interactly simplifies provider-patient administrative interactions and automates call scheduling for medical practices.
Another industry ready for innovation is insurance. Companies like Zelros provide personalized, real-time recommendations to assist insurers in enhancing client acquisition and bridging the insurance gap. Similarly, Covu transforms agency operations with AI-driven services, delivering outsourced solutions powered by AI.
In the logistics sector, companies like Kardinal AI are optimizing route planning in real time, reducing delivery times and costs while improving customer satisfaction. Even traditionally slower-to-adapt industries like construction are experiencing efficiency gains, with companies such as Outbuild improving scheduling and planning to help projects avoid delays.
These advancements improve processes and reduce operational costs, enhancing customer experiences and offering industry players a significant competitive advantage.
Examples of Vertical AI from our portfolio:
| Healthcare | Insurance | Logistics | Construction |
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Revolutionizing Business Functions with Agentic AI
Enterprise Agentic AI is transforming core business functions such as marketing, DevOps, sales, and customer service. Solutions like Salesforce Einstein and emerging startups drive this change, helping companies enhance their internal workflows. Unlike traditional robotic process automation (RPA) tools like UiPath and BluePrism, AI agents excel in non-deterministic environments. They surpass rule-based automation and considerably expand the range of tasks and workflows they can automate to assist human efforts.
The shift from RPA to Intelligent Automation (IA) signifies a fundamental evolution. While RPA focuses on mimicking repetitive, deterministic tasks, IA leverages advanced machine learning and reasoning capabilities to tackle more complex workflows. IA represents a new class of solutions that adapt dynamically, handle ambiguous scenarios, and work seamlessly across disparate systems, unlocking unprecedented value for businesses.
For example, Lyzr is an enterprise agent platform that allows users to create dependable and secure AI agents. By integrating AI into various functions such as sales development (SDR), marketing, and HR, organizations can achieve faster decision-making, improved hyper-personalization, and greater operational efficiency.
Agentic AI has received considerable attention—and rightly so. For the first time, these systems are unlocking reasoning abilities and functioning autonomously, all under human oversight, signifying a crucial shift in how technology enhances business operations and creates value. Unlike RPA, which was confined to narrowly defined, repetitive tasks, IA expands the scope of automation to include predictive analytics, strategic decision-making, and cross-functional workflows, signaling a significant leap forward in business efficiency.
The Convergence and Emergence of AI-Native Services
Vertical AI and Agentic AI work together to transform enterprise operations through human-centered automation. This partnership has created AI-native services by integrating industry-specific data (Vertical AI) with intelligent workflow automation (Agentic AI). This business model combines industry-specific solutions with AI-driven tools capable of reasoning and understanding human language. This method typically requires minimal changes in how customers purchase or budget, as it aligns with their existing operational expense plans. It presents a robust alternative to labor-intensive service providers or complex in-house solutions.
Consider Covu, one of our portfolio companies, as an example. Covu is transforming how insurance agencies manage operations by offering an AI-powered alternative to traditional Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or in-house management. It automates essential tasks tailored to the specific needs of insurance agencies, resulting in greater efficiency and an enhanced experience for clients and customers. What sets Covu apart is its end-to-end approach, which comprehensively addresses challenges and delivers valuable outcomes rather than merely providing partial solutions to complex business processes. This comprehensive model, driven by AI-native automation and expertise in insurance, allows agencies to streamline operations, improve results, and focus on serving their customers.
Redefining Work Responsibly
A common theme in Vertical and Enterprise Agentic AI is the evolving role of employees. As AI assumes routine and transactional tasks, workers increasingly become workflow orchestrators, managing complex systems instead of executing individual tasks. For instance, a marketing manager might dynamically oversee AI tools to launch campaigns across various channels. At the same time, a supply chain professional could coordinate predictive analytics tools to anticipate disruptions and optimize logistics. Likewise, doctors may depend on AI systems to summarize relevant information, enabling them to focus on critical decision-making. This transition highlights the need for upskilling and fostering a mindset that views AI as a collaborative partner in achieving greater efficiency and impact.
However, these advancements come with significant responsibilities. Trustworthy AI systems are essential for ensuring ethical, unbiased, and sustainable adoption. Companies must prioritize responsible AI practices by emphasizing strong data governance, transparency, validation mechanisms, and ethical considerations while keeping humans in the loop. This is especially critical for Vertical AI, where mistakes could have life-or-death consequences, such as in healthcare and Enterprise Agentic AI, where customer trust relies on data privacy and accuracy.
The Global Ecosystem Perspective
Connecting AI-native startups from global innovation hubs like France, India, and Israel to Silicon Valley unlocks transformative value by providing access to cutting-edge infrastructure, validating use cases, and establishing early design partnerships with global tech leaders. Silicon Valley’s AI ecosystem offers unparalleled opportunities to accelerate innovation while fostering collaboration among industry, academia, and investors. BGV, as a cross-border venture capital firm, is uniquely positioned to bridge these ecosystems, utilizing extensive networks and expertise to scale startups globally and contribute towards the democratization of AI. By promoting responsible AI development from the outset, AI-native startups can ensure their products are trustworthy for enterprises, delivering benefits for multiple stakeholders and advancing ethical innovation, long-term sustainability, and leadership in the global AI landscape.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the relationship between Vertical AI and Enterprise Agentic AI transforms industries and businesses while redefining the human role within organizations. By embracing responsible AI, enterprises can unlock the full potential of automation and encourage trust, innovation, and collaboration in an increasingly AI-focused world.
We are continuously deepening our understanding of AI technology’s implications in this fast-paced environment, where innovation is outpacing enterprise adoption. Committed to driving change responsibly, we place humans at the heart of this transformation. We’re eager to connect with founders, practitioners, and experts in the field. We’d love to hear from you if you’re working in this area or have insights to share! Feel free to reach out to [email protected] and [email protected].
