Companies need to start adapting for a world in which more markets operate 24 hours a day, much as trading does now.

Artificial intelligence is transforming businesses in an underappreciated way, extending the productive hours across various functions and industries. Companies need to start adapting for a world in which more markets operate 24 hours a day, much as trading does now.

Unlike human workers, the AI agents operating in fields from healthcare to cybersecurity don’t care about work-life balance. They don’t get tired or hungry, call in sick or go on vacation. They don’t fall in and out of love, pick up groceries on the way home, read bedtime stories to their children or separate their recyclables.

“AI is reshaping the economy by providing automation that transcends traditional time and capacity constraints, enabling businesses to operate seamlessly around the clock,” Konstantine Buhler, a partner at Sequoia Capital, told me. 

Buhler has developed an investment thesis around the topic, which he calls the “always-on economy.” The idea germinated while he was working on the $1.15 billion investment that Sequoia and cryptocurrency investor Paradigm made in Citadel Securities, the high-octane trading firm, in 2022. He came to more fully appreciate how Citadel’s application of algorithms and AI to financial markets naturally led it to operate without a break.

That same dynamic will play out in more and more areas of the economy over the next five to seven years, Buhler predicts.

Evening-to-morning workflow

Aaron Levie has at times wound down his workday as chief executive at cloud content management company Box at around 10 p.m. or 11 p.m. with an email asking someone on his team to conduct research into an area such as market strategy analysis. Now, he can “kick off” that work to one of several AI agents. The agent combs through a vast amount of data from sources such as market reports, competitor websites, industry publications and social -media conversations to generate a comprehensive overview of the topic, which he can follow-up on first thing in the morning.

“There was never a world where I could send that off to an analyst at midnight and wake up with that, you know, being done,” Levie said. “There was like maybe one person, every 10 years in the company who was that sort of night owl. But by and large it was not possible.”

Those human constraints have often led to delayed decision-making and missed opportunities at all sorts of companies.

An always-on capability, on the other hand, will play into existing trends in areas such as sales, where companies strive toward “zero latency” as they tend to customer needs, according to Stav Levi Neumark, co-founder and CEO of Alta, which offers companies AI agents to help improve software experiences. The ability to respond to customer inquiries around the clock with the same capability that’s available in the middle of the afternoon is increasingly important. 

“It’s a cultural shift in expectation,” she added. “…Every minute of delay can diminish a customer’s intent.”

A faster cadence for business

Most AI agents and tools will commoditize. But the companies that optimize their workflow, roles and ability to partner with agents in an always-on economy stand to develop a sustainable, competitive advantage, according to Conor Grennan, chief AI architect at NYU Stern School of Business.

The driving principle is to move faster than ever before, according to Todd Olson, co-founder and CEO of Pendo, which provides a software platform that helps companies improve user experience for their products. “Business needs to develop a new cadence,” he said.

That means deemphasizing many longstanding habits and rituals, such as getting people in a room once a week or month to make big decisions, when convening on “asynchronous” platforms such as Slack can be faster, he said.

As Buhler says, the shift to an always-on economy isn’t just about using AI to make predictions. It’s about acting on them continuously.

Write to Steven Rosenbush at [email protected]