Deloitte rolls out connected ecosystem for AI agents

Big Four firm Deloitte announced the launch of the Global Agentic Network, a connected ecosystem of AI agents for business purposes to augment and automate client operations.

Through this network, Deloitte intends to provide services to build AI agents on various software platforms across Deloitte's broader ecosystem, including the recent Deloitte US launch of Zora AI, a suite of AI agents. 

An AI agent, broadly speaking, is an AI model that is capable of at least some degree of autonomy to make decisions and interact with things outside itself in order to achieve some sort of goal—whether booking a flight, sending a bill or buying a gift—without needing constant human guidance.

This will allow businesses to integrate AI agents, regardless of sector, into their workflows, said Heather Stockton, Deloitte's global consulting services, technology and transformation leader. The agents will work across the firm's audit and assurance, tax and legal, strategy, risk and transactions, and technology and transformation businesses together. 

For Deloitte, the launch of this network presents opportunities for moving further past traditional service models and into areas once dominated exclusively by human specialization, such as strategic decision-making, system implementations, creative problem-solving and complex negotiations.

This is only the latest move in what seems to be a Big Four-wide push toward agentic AI. KPMG recently announced the incorporation of agents directly into its audit platform Clara with plans to develop more in the future. Earlier, PwC announced AgentOS, which acts as both the central nervous system and switchboard for enterprise AI via a patent-pending orchestration system. Meanwhile, EY, in cooperation with chip maker Nvidia, launched its EY.ai Agentic Platform on the full Nvidia AI stack to respond to real-time events, adapt to regulatory changes and drive financial and risk decisions across global operations.