Dorsey’s Block Turns AI Agents Into Real Employees

Block on Tuesday (July 21) released Buzz, an open-source collaboration platform where employees and artificial intelligence (AI) agents work side by side in the same channels. Block CEO Jack Dorsey said on X that Buzz is “model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign and open source.” He said Block built it to cut the company’s dependence on Slack and GitHub.

The launch answers a question most workplace software has not caught up with: where do digital workers sit once a company hires them? Most chat tools treat AI as an add-on that borrows a human’s account. Buzz gives each agent its own membership, complete with its own account, cryptographic keys and permissions built on the open Nostr protocol. That lets it post messages, review code and kick off routine tasks the way a colleague would, SiliconANGLE reported. “Every company is going to need a place where humans and agents work together,” said Bradley Axen, Block’s head of AI capabilities said in the announcement.

How Buzz Actually Works

Buzz folds the tools most teams spread across separate products into one place. It combines channels, threads, direct messages, voice, media sharing, code storage and automated workflows, Crypto Briefing reported. The layout, Block said, will feel familiar to anyone who has used a modern team chat tool.

Under the hood, though, the platform is not tied to any one AI provider. It works with agents built on Anthropic’s Claude Code, OpenAI’s Codex and Block’s own goose system, Decrypt reported. That means a company can bring whichever AI it already uses. Block principal designer Thomas Petersen said the company built the entire platform using agents, including its interface.

That flexibility does not come at the cost of oversight. For executives, the practical payoff is accountability. Buzz logs every message, code change and task an agent completes under that agent’s own identity. A manager can see exactly what a digital worker did, when it did it and which human is responsible for it. That answers the question boards keep asking about AI in operations: who did what.

AI Agents Are Landing on the Org Chart

Buzz is built for a shift already underway inside companies. PYMNTS reported, citing Harvard Business Review research that 31% of leaders surveyed say their companies frame AI as a teammate or employee, and nearly 1 in 4 say agents are formally listed on organizational charts. Those agents need somewhere to work, and the software that manages people and digital workers side by side is still being invented.

The shift is picking up speed. PYMNTS Intelligence found in its report “Agentic AI Breaks Out of the Sandbox” that agentic AI adoption in the services sector jumped fivefold between August and November. It climbed from 4.3% to 25%, while adoption at technology firms tripled to 30.8%.

Block Challenges Slack on Its Own Ground

Block is not alone in seeing the opening. TechCrunch noted that Paradigm, a crypto-focused venture firm, has built Centaur, a rival platform. Its chief technology officer, Georgios Konstantopoulos, argued companies will want to run the software themselves for security while still reaching workers inside Slack. For newer startups without an established Slack presence, TechCrunch said, Buzz could be worth investigating. The outlet cautioned against moving an established team over while the product is in its early stages.

Block’s pitch against the incumbents is control. Companies can run Buzz on their own systems, keeping internal conversations and code off Block’s servers entirely, or use Block’s hosted version. The software is free and open source, meaning anyone can inspect or modify it.

The product is early. SiliconANGLE reported that mobile apps and approval controls for agent workflows remain unfinished. Block has not disclosed pricing for the hosted service.

For all PYMNTS AI and digital transformation coverage, subscribe to the daily AI and Digital Transformation Newsletters.

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *