In today’s Finshots, we talk about the rise of AI agents and whether they could actually end the world of apps.

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The Story

What if you never had to open an app again?

Imagine that you’re planning a trip. From the moment you step out of your house to boarding a flight or train, from booking your hotel stay to reserving a cab at your destination, every little detail is sorted. But here’s the twist. You don’t need to open a single app. No hopping between Expedia, Skyscanner or MakeMyTrip. No switching tabs, no downloading, no juggling five different interfaces. Instead, you’re just chatting with an AI agent, and it’s doing all the heavy lifting for you.

Sounds crazy, we know. But that’s where we’re heading.

So, what exactly is an AI agent?

Think of them as super smart digital assistants. You give them a task, and they figure out how to get it done. Whether it’s pulling information from other apps, making decisions on the fly or even learning something new on the job, these agents are built to operate independently. They don’t need to be spoon fed instructions at every step. And they don’t forget what they’ve done before either.

Let’s say a company used to need six people working round the clock to plan and execute its marketing campaigns. With an AI agent though, one person and the agent can wrap it all up in under an hour. Sure, that sounds like bad news for jobs, but there’s a bright side too. These AI agents could be a game changer in sectors facing severe talent shortages.

Take cybersecurity, for instance. In 2023, over 5.5 million positions were lying vacant in the field globally. That leaves companies vulnerable. Without enough employees in the field, it’s tough to detect and respond to threats in real time. And it’s only getting worse. Research from the World Economic Forum shows that since 2024, the cyber security skills gap has widened by another 8%. Two out of every three organisations say that they just don’t have the talent they need to stay secure. This is where AI agents can step in. They can detect suspicious logins, block intruders accessing a system from odd locations or flag traffic spikes when hackers try to flood a website with fake visits. And they can act pretty quickly.

But that’s just in the corporate world. On the personal front, AI agents are just as handy. Whether you need to reset a password, analyse a complex spreadsheet, generate an image or just search the internet, they’ve got your back. And since they know how to tap into other systems to fetch what they need, you don’t have to juggle ten different apps just to get one job done.

Amazon’s already testing this idea with an AI shopping agent feature called “Buy for Me”. So if Amazon doesn’t have a product you’re looking for, this AI agent will find it on other websites. And if you like what it shows, it’ll place the order, all without you ever leaving the Amazon app. That’s great for Amazon. Not so much for everyone else. Because if people stop hopping between apps and stick to the one where an AI agent gets everything done, other platforms could start losing serious ground.

And that’s a problem. See, apps thrive on user traffic. More users mean more sales, more in-app purchases, more data to learn from and more advertising revenue. Apps make services easier to access. If you want to use Adobe’s design tools, the app streamlines your experience. But if users no longer feel the need to open that app, it loses business.

Now, we’re not making this point just because of one new AI agent that Amazon is working on. AI agents aren’t exactly new and have been on the rise for a while now. For context, the global market for AI agents is projected to grow from $5 billion in 2024 to a whopping $47 billion by 2030. That’s a compounded annual growth rate of 45%!

While much of this growth is on the business side, there isn’t much chatter about how they’re reshaping consumer habits. But if we were to take cues from generative AI, it’s clear that consumer focused AI agents might catch on pretty quickly. To put things in perspective, Gartner predicts a 25% drop in search engine traffic by 2026, thanks to the rise of generative AI and personal AI agents. If that’s anything to go by, it’s entirely possible that you’ll be ditching apps and turning to an AI agent to get things done sooner than you think.

So… is this the end of apps?

You’d think so, right? Especially when you hear about AI agents like Midjourney helping you design stunning graphics just by chatting with it — no need to learn Adobe or Canva. Or Mindtrip, an AI travel planner that could replace your usual go to platforms like Expedia or TripAdvisor. In fact, even biggies like Satya Nadella and Nandan Nilekani see AI agents replacing apps in the future.

But here’s the thing. History is proof that technology doesn’t always wipe out what came before. As Chuck Whitten, Senior Partner at Bain & Company puts it beautifully, “One lesson history teaches us is that technological revolutions are rarely binary. Transitions don’t typically lead to total replacement. Instead, they create ecosystems marked by heterogeneity—a mix of old and new models, each finding its niche.”

Just look at the PC. When smartphones and tablets exploded in popularity, many predicted the death of the personal computer. But this story you’re reading was actually written on a laptop. PCs didn’t disappear. They just found a new purpose. They’re still the go-to when you need to get serious work done. They’re built for focus, multitasking and heavy duty tasks that your phone just isn’t cut out for.

Or take Slack. It promised to revolutionise workplace communication. And people thought email would fade into obscurity. But guess what? Email usage has only gone up globally from 280 billion emails sent and received daily in 2018 to 360 billion in 2024 (nearly a 30% increase). That number’s expected to hit 400 billion by 2027. Why? Because old habits die hard. Email still feels more formal, more “official”, especially in business. And once something becomes a norm, it’s tough to change it.

That’s perhaps how AI agents will coexist with apps too. Rather than killing them, they might nudge apps to evolve. We could see more apps building their own AI agent style features to keep users within their ecosystems. After all, third-party AI agents still need data and most of that data sits within the apps that have been around for years. If these apps invest in smarter AI interfaces of their own, they might offer better, more integrated experiences than any outside agent can.

And here’s another thing. While one AI agent might help you plan a trip, it won’t help you create a poster or file your taxes. You’d still need multiple AI agents for different tasks. In a way, that’s no different from using different apps today. Sure, the interface might change from swiping and tapping to simply chatting. But the fragmentation remains. Unless a single, all-powerful agent comes along that can do it all, convenience will still come with trade offs.

Which is why this whole AI agent wave might help apps. Sure, they might feel the pressure to invest, innovate and offer better experiences to stay relevant. But that’s a good thing, right?

Until next time...

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