Kantata launches Agent Studio for professional services

Kantata has launched Agent Studio for professional services firms, allowing users to create and manage custom AI agents through its existing platform.

The launch comes as businesses grow more concerned about the spread of large numbers of AI agents across teams and workflows.

Agent Studio sits within Kantata's Expertise Engine and lets users describe in plain language the work they want an agent to handle. The system then builds and refines the agent through dialogue, with validation checks before publication.

The tool is aimed at users such as practice leads, delivery directors and PMO owners, rather than developers or AI specialists. Once published, an agent can be triggered by a person or through an automated workflow with a single command.

Managing sprawl

The product is being introduced as companies prepare for a sharp rise in AI agent use. Gartner forecasts that the average Fortune 500 enterprise will be running more than 150,000 AI agents by 2028, up from 15 today. That projected growth has raised concerns about oversight, data leakage and unsanctioned behaviour.

Kantata is positioning the system around a single "superagent" model rather than separate agents for tasks such as resourcing, risk, status updates and estimating. The approach is intended to reduce fragmentation by giving one agent access to platform-wide context, including data and workflow relationships.

Basware, which sells invoice lifecycle management software, is already using the system to reduce the time professional services staff spend on administration and internal process work.

"I want our professional services team spending time with customers - not doing documentation, figuring out resourcing and entering their billable time," said Mark Johnston, Chief Customer Officer at Basware.

"With Kantata, we can create AI agents to do this work in the context of our business and processes and focus our people on delivering expertise that moves the needle for our customers in a scalable way," Johnston said.

Expertise focus

Kantata argues that the main issue for professional services firms is not simply automation, but how they capture internal knowledge and apply it consistently across projects and clients. Agent Studio extends the company's Expertise Agent, which it previously introduced as a superagent for the sector.

The system is designed to capture delivery standards in plain language, including format, escalation rules, level of detail and required outputs for recurring work. Kantata says this should let firms apply the same standards repeatedly without reconstructing them each time or relying on the experience of whoever is assigned to a project.

"When it comes to professional services, AI isn't the differentiator - expertise is. AI is just what lets firms unlock, scale and defend it," said Michael Speranza, Chief Executive Officer of Kantata.

"Any vendor can give a firm a tool to build AI agents. But if all you're doing is automating processes, you're just racing to the bottom and simply reducing costs, rather than developing differentiation. Agent Studio is designed to help firms compound their expertise in a simple, repeatable way and use it to transform the way they operate," Speranza said.

Kantata says the product also aims to reduce the repeated effort of re-explaining tasks to AI systems. In practice, this means turning recurring instructions into a reusable command, rather than asking teams to draft and refine prompts each time work needs to be done.

Every build and edit is automatically checked to ensure inputs and outputs are structured correctly before an agent is released. That governance element is central to Kantata's pitch to firms worried about consistency and control as AI use expands.

"An agent that improvises is a liability in a business where the same deliverable has to hold up in front of a client every time," said Vikas Nehru, Chief Technology Officer of Kantata.

"By letting firms capture their standards once and execute them through a single governed agent, we make consistency a property of the platform rather than a matter of who happened to be staffed. That is a very different promise than adding another agent to the pile," Nehru said.

Agent Studio is available now and already in use by customers.