How These Startups Cornered The AI Agent Market

Forbes Daily Briefing · Oct 13, 2026 · 7m

Ayear ago, as AI was supposedly coding software engineers out of a job, it still couldn’t reliably book dinner. And some of the biggest tech companies around were struggling to build an assistant that could use your apps without creating more work for you.

When Apple delayed the Siri upgrade that would have allowed it to take action within apps, software chef, Craig Federighi, offered a blunt explanation: “This just doesn’t work reliably enough to be an Apple product.”

Amazon’s upgraded Alexa+ did manage a dinner reservation when a reporter from The Verge tested it in July 2025. The request…