This Week in AI: Intuit Rolls Out AI Agents to SMBs

This week in artificial intelligence (AI) news, Intuit in introducing AI agents for its enterprise clients, while voice AI startups drew in an eightfold increase in investments last year compared to 2023. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio launched an AI safety nonprofit, and AI coding tools are supercharging small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

Intuit Accelerates Roll out of AI Agents

Intuit said it has accelerated its ability to deliver enhance agentic AI experiences to users of its products, including TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks and Mailchimp.

The company upgraded its Generative AI Operating System, which enables it to roll out AI agents faster to its users.

AI agents can automatically process accounts receivable and accounts payable with QuickBooks Online. They also automate this year’s U.S. and state tax code updates into TurboTax, to be reviewed by human experts for the 2026 tax season.

Intuit plans to roll out AI agents to handle payments, finance, project management, accounting and other functions for SMBs.

Read more: Intuit Updates GenOS for Agentic AI Experiences for Its 100 Million Users

Voice AI Startups Draw Investors

Voice AI startups raised $2.1 billion in 2024, an eightfold increase from 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Voice-based technology is rapidly advancing and now rivals or surpasses human performance in industries like healthcare, retail, and food service, according to Andreessen Horowitz.

Voice is becoming a primary interface for AI, enabling 24/7 customer interactions and automating tasks like appointment booking and phone orders. Generation Z leads in voice shopping, with 30.4% using it weekly, according to a PYMNTS Intelligence report, “How the World Does Digital.”

Companies such as Yum! Brands, Jersey Mike’s and Allina Health are deploying voice AI to manage demand and streamline customer service.

Read more: Voice AI Funding Surges 8X as Businesses Humanize Chatbots

AI Pioneer Starts an AI Safety Nonprofit

Yoshua Bengio has unveiled LawZero, an AI safety research organization that aims to keep the technology from inflicting existential harm on humanity.

Bengio has received $30 million in funding and employs more than a dozen researchers, according to The Guardian.

Its backers include the Future of Life Institute, Skype Co-founder Jaan Tallinn and former Google Chair Eric Schmidt’s research organization, Schmidt Sciences.

LawZero was started “in response to evidence that today’s frontier AI models have growing dangerous capabilities and behaviors, including deception, cheating, lying, hacking, self-preservation, and more generally, goal misalignment,” Bengio said in a blog post.

OpenAI began as an AI safety nonprofit, created to offset Google’s power in AI as a for-profit behemoth. It has restructured into a public benefit corporation with a nonprofit parent.

Read more: AI Pioneer Yoshua Bengio Launches Nonprofit to Develop Safe AI

Google AI Glasses Coming After 2025

AI-powered glasses from Google and Warby Parker won’t hit the market until after 2025, Warby Parker Co-CEO Dave Gilboa said at the Baird Global Consumer, Technology and Services Conference this week.

The collaboration, unveiled at Google’s developer conference in May, adds to a growing list of tech firms pushing into smart eyewear.

Meta and Ray-Ban maker EssilorLuxottica launched AI-embedded glasses in 2019, followed by Amazon’s Echo Frames. Snapchat has unveiled AI-upgraded Spectacles. Apple and Samsung are also developing smart glasses, alongside startups like Xreal.

Read more: Warby Parker Co-CEO: Google AI Glasses Coming After 2025

AI Coding Tools Help SMBs

Small businesses are increasingly adopting AI-powered coding assistants to cut development costs, accelerate product launches and compete with larger firms.

An SMB founder said instead of hiring five junior developers and two senior developers to be their mentors, the company can hire two senior developers and equip them with AI tools, getting the work done faster.

Tools like GitHub Copilot and Replit Ghostwriter allow small teams — or even solo developers — to build apps, automate processes and test frameworks without full engineering teams.

Another company, DualEntry, was told it would cost $100 million to build an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system like NetSuite from scratch. The cost was out of reach. Instead, they used ChatGPT, Cursor and other AI tools to build their own ERP in nine months with a team of 11 developers.

“AI is the great equalizer,” said DualEntry Co-founder Santiago Nestares.

Read more: AI Coding Assistants Give Big-Tech Powers to Small Businesses