The Startup Teaching AI Agents How to Actually Get Stuff Done

I’ve written lots over the past few months about how startups and big tech companies alike are trying to tackle the problem of agentic commerce—the fancy term for “agent” services that take action on behalf of consumers, in this case, buying stuff. While AI search is a powerful tool to help shoppers hone in on the perfect gift or find a hotel that meets all the requirements for an ideal stay, getting an AI agent to actually complete a gift purchase or a hotel reservation is a whole other matter.

Now, one startup, which has been trying to tackle this problem for the past eight years, thinks it’s figured out the answer. AUI, founded by entrepreneurs Ohad Elhelo and Ori Cohen in 2017, is coming out of stealth mode with what it calls an “agentic language model” known as Apollo-1. AUI says Apollo-1 can more reliably complete tasks than other agents like those from OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.