## This Week's Business Automation News

AI Automation Is Harder Than People Thought

Two important technology leaders are being honest about a big challenge. Ali Ghodsi runs Databricks, a company worth $134 billion, and Arvind Jain runs Glean, worth $7.2 billion. Both companies work with AI automation. They said something surprising: AI agents don't work as easily as many business leaders believe. "It's not just you can unleash the agents, and it just works," said Ghodsi. Jain tried using AI inside his own company to automatically find what each worker wanted to do each week and write it down for leaders to read. He thought AI would do this like magic, but it didn't work well.

Jain also tried to build a special AI model just for one job at his company, but that didn't work either. The company went back to using regular AI models instead. "It actually takes much longer than you know to actually generate success," Jain explained. Both leaders said that setting up AI automation properly is like a difficult type of engineering. It needs careful testing, real work by real people, and strong teams to help it succeed.

When AI Projects Fail, That Can Be Good News

Here's something interesting: both CEOs said that when many AI projects fail, that's actually what you want. "You hear these 95% of projects fail," said Jain. "That's actually what you want. When you're actually experimenting with new technology, if all of your projects are failing, that means you're not trying enough." This means companies should try many new ideas and learn from what doesn't work.

Ghodsi also talked about keeping humans in charge of AI. Even as companies use more AI agents, he said humans should always be watching and checking the work. "We all become supervisors," Ghodsi explained. Other smart people agree. Yoshua Bengio, one of the most famous AI scientists in the world, said the human touch will become even more valuable as machines do more jobs.

Companies Are Investing Back Into Their Workers

Good news for workers: when AI helps companies work better, companies are not always cutting jobs. In fact, a big survey of 500 business decision-makers across America found that most companies are using AI's benefits to grow their businesses. Almost half of companies are using productivity gains from AI to make their AI systems even better. Only 17% of companies said AI caused job loss.

Instead of cutting workers, many companies are teaching their workers new skills. "For every one company that is cutting headcount, we see more companies taking their AI gains and pouring them back into upskilling their talent," said Dan Diasio, who leads AI work for the big consulting company EY. Companies that spend more money on AI see bigger results. Companies spending $10 million or more on AI saw bigger productivity gains (71%) than companies spending less money (52%).

Physical AI Robots Are Starting Real Jobs

One of the coolest developments this week involves physical AI - AI that controls real machines and robots. Right now, robots using AI are working in real companies and making money. At Spanx, a clothing company in America, humanoid robots handle customer orders. At BMW factories in Spartanburg, Figure 02 robots put sheet metal into car frames 400% faster than before. At a warehouse in Georgia, Agility Robotics' two-legged robots move packages.

These aren't test projects anymore. They're real robots doing real jobs. Amazon has over 750,000 robots working in its warehouses. Amazon even built special robots with artificial intelligence, including Vulcan (a robot arm with a sense of touch), Cardinal (which stacks packages), and Proteus (which moves carts). These robots use real AI to understand what they're doing.

The Robot and AI Market Is Growing Massively

The money flowing into robot and AI companies is huge. Physical AI companies got more than $7.5 billion in 2024. In 2025, it's even more. Jeff Bezos-backed companies, Figure AI, and others raised billions of dollars. One company called Project Prometheus, led by Bezos and other famous entrepreneurs, raised $6.2 billion. According to financial research firm Crunchbase, more than $6 billion went into robotics companies in just the first seven months of 2025.

The whole market is expected to explode. The global market for AI in robotics was $12.8 billion in 2023 and is expected to reach $124.8 billion by 2030. Industrial robots make up 68% of this market right now. The autonomous vehicle market is also huge, expected to grow from $68.09 billion in 2024 to $214.32 billion by 2030.

What The Future Looks Like

By 2027, experts believe the story will change from "will robots replace humans?" to "how do humans and robots work together?" Humans will move from doing repetitive physical work to managing teams of AI robots. Morgan Stanley predicted that Amazon's robot work could save the company $10 billion every year by 2030. McKinsey thinks autonomous trucks could create a $600 billion market by 2035.

But here's the human side: The World Economic Forum says AI and automation will create 170 million new jobs globally by 2030 while only displacing 92 million. That's a net gain of 78 million jobs. The key thing that will matter most is who can teach, manage, and work well with AI systems. The future of business automation is not about humans versus machines - it's about them working together as a team.