The world of AI is moving into an exciting new era this week, with multi-agent systems becoming a hot topic everywhere. A multi-agent system is like having a team of robot helpers, where each helper is good at one special job, and together they can solve big, complicated problems. This is different from older AI chatbots that could only answer questions.

On December 15, Nvidia announced its new Nemotron 3 family of AI models, which are tools designed to help developers build these multi-agent teams. The company says these new models have a special design that lets many agents work together at the same time. Early users include big companies like Accenture, which helps other businesses, Zoom for video meetings, and Oracle, a software company. Jensen Huang, the founder of Nvidia, explained that "Nemotron transforms advanced AI into an open platform that gives developers the tools they need to build agentic systems at scale." This basically means it makes it easier for regular developers to create these AI teams without having special training.

Google researchers published important findings about when to use single agents versus multi-agent systems. They found that if you have a job where you must do one thing, then another thing, then another thing in order, a single agent works great. But if you can do many things at the same time, using multiple agents together is much better. In their tests with money-related tasks, a multi-agent team did 80% better when they had one agent acting like a manager. The different agents reported to this manager agent, like workers reporting to a boss. A second type of team setup, where all agents worked independently without a manager, was still 57% better than one agent, but not as good as having a manager.

Real companies are already using these systems to help their workers and customers. Capital One, a big United States bank, created an AI helper called Chat Concierge that helps car dealers and customers. This AI chat helper makes it much faster for customers to get help, and it successfully turns 55% more people into actual buyers. The team at Capital One worked hard to make the AI respond quickly, making it five times faster than when they first started. They did this by building their own special setup instead of just using someone else's AI.

The FDA, which is the government group in the United States that checks medicines and food safety, is now using agentic AI in their work. The FDA said these AI helpers will make their work faster and more reliable, especially for checking medicines before they go to patients, watching for problems after medicines are already being used, and visiting factories to make sure they are safe.

Zoom, the company everyone used for video meetings, just launched AI Companion 3.0, which is a big upgrade. This new version can now visit websites, create action plans automatically, and talk to different types of AI models. The AI can look back at all your past meetings and notes to remember important information. It can help write emails, create documents, and even help you set up special workflows where agents do work for you automatically.

PepsiCo, a huge food and drink company, shared that they are testing AI agents in three areas: their computer and data teams, helping customers, and making their workers happier. A leader there said they found that both customers and workers actually want to talk to and work with these AI agents. They also tried using AI agents to test computer software, and it worked even better than expected. The AI agents found problems that human testers would have missed.

JLL, a company that manages real estate and buildings, has 34 different AI agents being tested right now. One agent can help with problems in buildings. For example, if a person living or working in a building says it is too cold, the AI agent can automatically change the temperature for them. Another interesting thing is that AI agents are helping with software building. This means instead of people writing code, people now manage and supervise the AI agents that write code.

However, there are still challenges. Only about 11% of all organizations have actually started using multi-agent AI in their real work, according to Deloitte. This means 89% are still not using it yet. Even though 99% of companies say they plan to use it, most are still in the testing stage. Most companies are still worried about making sure these AI agents do what they are told and do not cause problems. By the year 2028, Gartner says 15% of work decisions could be made by AI agents. That means these systems are definitely the future.