Appian wants to usher in the age of ‘serious AI’ where processes are automated in unglamorous places
Founder and CEO Matt Calkin opens Appian Europe with the belief that we can do business automation better
Appian has launched a new studio of AI agents for business automation, but it wants you to know these are not your usual agents – they’re better.
Agent Studio, first unveiled at Appian World 2025, is now generally available, with its beta program coming to an end this week at its Appian Europe conference in London.
Appian is a native AI company – a bona fide automation specialist – that takes business processes and shrinks them down from days, weeks, even months, into mere minutes.
It takes B2B data and uses it to automate business processes, so it is an AI company, but it wants to stress to you that it isn’t like others, and its agents aren’t like all the other agents.
For one thing, it has a slower approach. Agent Studio holds the mantle of the “longest, largest beta program” Appian has ever conducted, according to CEO and founder Matt Calkin.
Part of the reason for the slow process is compliance, the company told attendees. Appian is a fan of the EU’s data regulations and not a ‘move fast and break things’ innovator, Calkin said.
It also wanted to offer agents that were “dramatically different” from those already out there in the ecosystem. Agent Studio is a suite that lets businesses control and deploy agents at scale.
These are agents that can ‘reason’, according to Appian, and they can handle unexpected conditions and or act on enterprise data to automate complex workloads.
This is achieved through Appian’s ‘data fabric’ architecture, which is largely where Appian believes its agents are better, as it offers a holistic view of a company's business data.
This, it said, makes for smarter decisions, real-time adjustments, and easy governance.
Misapplied AI vs serious AI
Calkin began the event talking about the current state of AI and how his company was different.
Referencing a recent MIT study that stated 95% of AI projects fail, Calkin noted a key factor behind this is that people misunderstand that AI isn’t a standalone technology.
Indeed, it's a very dependent one, requiring other elements such as good quality data and meaningful processes to fully reach its potential.
For Calkin, AI is only as good as the data you give it, but also only as good as the work you make it do. This is how you get to “serious AI”.
“Serious AI is happening now, but it may not be happening where you think it is,” Calkin told attendees. “It’s happening in some pretty unglamorous places, like procurement or government contracts.”
Where businesses are inundated with documents, serious AI is emerging. Invoices, receipts, bills, transcript logs, the list goes on across both digital and physical documents, and it is here where serious AI is helping.
And, as Calkin said, “the returns are not boring”.
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