MAROKO133 Update ai: Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft an

📌 MAROKO133 Hot ai: Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Micro

Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot, the company's workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees.

The new Slackbot, now generally available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, is Salesforce's most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging "agentic AI" movement — where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products rather than render them obsolete.

"Slackbot isn't just another copilot or AI assistant," said Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack's chief technology officer, in an exclusive interview with Salesforce. "It's the front door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce."

From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the ground up

Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the new Slackbot from its predecessor: "The old Slackbot was, you know, a little tricycle, and the new Slackbot is like, you know, a Porsche."

The original Slackbot, which has existed since Slack's early days, performed basic algorithmic tasks — reminding users to add colleagues to documents, suggesting channel archives, and delivering simple notifications. The new version runs on an entirely different architecture built around a large language model and sophisticated search capabilities that can access Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendar data, and years of Slack conversations.

"It's two different things," Harris explained. "The old Slackbot was algorithmic and fairly simple. The new Slackbot is brand new — it's based around an LLM and a very robust search engine, and connections to third-party search engines, third-party enterprise data."

Salesforce chose to retain the Slackbot brand despite the fundamental technical overhaul. "People know what Slackbot is, and so we wanted to carry that forward," Harris said.

Why Anthropic's Claude powers the new Slackbot — and which AI models could come next

The new Slackbot runs on Claude, Anthropic's large language model, a choice driven partly by compliance requirements. Slack's commercial service operates under FedRAMP Moderate certification to serve U.S. federal government customers, and Harris said Anthropic was "the only provider that could give us a compliant LLM" when Slack began building the new system.

But that exclusivity won't last. "We are, this year, going to support additional providers," Harris said. "We have a great relationship with Google. Gemini is incredible — performance is great, cost is great. So we're going to use Gemini for some things." He added that OpenAI remains a possibility as well.

Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's view that large language models are becoming commoditized: "You've heard Marc talk about LLMs are commodities, that they're democratized. I call them CPUs."

On the sensitive question of training data, Harris was unequivocal: Salesforce does not train any models on customer data. "Models don't have any sort of security," he explained. "If we trained it on some confidential conversation that you and I have, I don't want Carolyn to know — if I train it into the LLM, there is no way for me to say you get to see the answer, but Carolyn doesn't."

Inside Salesforce's internal experiment: 80,000 employees tested Slackbot with striking results

Salesforce has been testing the new Slackbot internally for months, rolling it out to all 80,000 employees. According to Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, the results have been striking: "It's the fastest adopted product in Salesforce history."

Internal data shows that two-thirds of Salesforce employees have tried the new Slackbot, with 80% of those users continuing to use it regularly. Internal satisfaction rates reached 96% — the highest for any AI feature Slack has shipped. Employees report saving between two and 20 hours per week.

The adoption happened largely organically. "I think it was about five days, and a Canvas was developed by our employees called 'The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,'" Gavin said. "People just started adding to it organically. I think it's up to 250-plus prompts that are in this Canvas right now."

Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, found that 73% of internal adoption was driven by social sharing rather than top-down mandates. "Everybody is there to help each other learn and communicate hacks," she said.

How Slackbot transforms scattered enterprise data into executive-ready insights

During a product demonstration, Amy Bauer, Slack's product experience designer, showed how Slackbot can synthesize information across multiple sources. In one example, she asked Slackbot to analyze customer feedback from a pilot program, upload an image of a usage dashboard, and have Slackbot correlate the qualitative and quantitative data.

"This is where Slackbot really earns its keep for me," Bauer explained. "What it's doing is not just simply reading the image — it's actually looking at the image and comparing it to the insight it just generated for me."

Slackbot can then query Salesforce to find enterprise accounts with open deals that might be good candidates for early access, creating what Bauer called "a really great justification and plan to move forward." Finally, it can synthesize all that information into a Canvas — Slack's collaborative document format — and find calendar availability among stakeholders to schedule a review meeting.

"Up until this point, we have been working in a one-to-one capacity with Slackbot," Bauer said. "But one of the benefits that I can do now is take this insight and have it generate this into a Canvas, a shared workspace where I can iterate on it, refine it with Slackbot, or share it out with my team."

Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer, said the Canvas creation demonstrates where the product is heading: "This is making a tool call internally to Slack Canvas to actually write, effectively, a shared document. But it signals where we're going with Slackbot — we're eventually going to be adding in additional third-party tool calls."

MrBeast's company became a Slackbot guinea pig—and employees say they're saving 90 minutes a day

Among Salesforce's pilot customers is Beast Industries, the parent company of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the company's chief information officer, joined the launch announcement to describe his experience.

"As somebody who has rolled out enterprise technologies for over two decades now, this was practically one of the easiest," Madrigal …

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🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com

📌 MAROKO133 Update ai: North America’s first electrochemical lithium refinery aims

Venture-backed lithium refining platform Mangrove Lithium has opened what it says is North America’s first commercial electrochemical lithium refining facility, launching a 1,000-tonne-per-year plant in Delta, British Columbia.

The company says the site can produce enough battery-grade lithium to support about 25,000 electric vehicles each year, adding new domestic supply as automakers race to secure battery materials.

Lithium refining is a major choke point in the EV supply chain. Much of the world’s refining capacity is concentrated overseas, leaving North American battery makers exposed to delays, price swings and geopolitical risk.

Mangrove says its new facility uses proprietary electrochemical technology to turn extracted lithium into battery-grade material more economically, flexibly and sustainably than conventional chemical refining methods.

Supply chain shift begins

The Delta plant marks a commercial step for lithium processing in Canada, where policymakers and industry have been pushing to build local capacity from mining through battery manufacturing.

The opening also comes as Western automakers look to reduce dependence on imported battery metals and strengthen regional sourcing for future EV production.

“This is a landmark moment not just for Mangrove, but for Canada,” said Dr. Saad Dara, CEO and Founder of Mangrove Lithium.

“By commissioning the first commercial electrochemical lithium refinery in North America, we are proving that lithium can be refined domestically, sustainably, and competitively.”

The company says local refining can help shorten transport routes, reduce dependence on imported battery materials, and improve long-term supply security for EV makers.

Lithium chemicals such as lithium hydroxide and lithium carbonate are key ingredients in many rechargeable batteries used in electric cars and energy storage systems.

Bigger expansion planned

Mangrove also announced plans for a larger facility in Eastern Canada tied to spodumene processing and lithium refining. The company says that project could supply enough material for 500,000 EVs annually.

Engineering and pilot work for the eastern site is being supported by conditionally approved funding of up to CAD 21.88 million from Natural Resources Canada through its Critical Minerals Research, Development and Demonstration Program.

Mangrove has also signed a memorandum of understanding with Élévra to source spodumene feedstock from the North American Lithium mine in Quebec.

That could create what the company describes as Canada’s first mine-to-cathode lithium supply chain, linking raw material extraction with refining and battery production.

“Canada is leveraging our critical mineral resources – including our lithium – to unlock supply chain security, job creation, and clean energy innovation,” said the Honorable Tim Hodgson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources.

Industry and governments across North America are investing heavily in battery metals as EV demand rises and countries seek more control over critical mineral processing.

Mangrove is backed by investors including Canada Growth Fund, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, BMW iVentures, Mitsubishi Corporation and Asahi Kasei.

The Delta launch gives Canada a new foothold in a part of the battery market that has long been dominated by foreign processors.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com