AI isn’t just a feature anymore – it’s becoming a teammate! From drafting emails to designing slides, researching markets, or building financial models, a new layer of “agentic” tools is emerging that resemble an AI-native Office suite.
The market is splitting into two approaches to agentic productivity. On one side are the “all-in-one” horizontal tools, built to handle anything across apps and tasks. On the other are vertical specialists, designed to go deep into a single workflow like email, slides, or spreadsheets. Both are evolving quickly – and both have tradeoffs.
Generalist tools are designed for flexibility. They can move across different contexts, apps, and tasks, but often at the cost of polish and precision.
Specialist tools are built for depth and reliability. Instead of trying to do everything, these tools focus on structured workflows where trust, polish, and user control are critical. Today’s vertical landscape is anchored by tools covering core professional workflows.
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