BuddyBee.ai launches agentic AI platform for small business digital workforce automation
What’s happening: Australian startup BuddyBee.ai has launched an agentic AI platform that creates digital workforces for small businesses, securing $1.9 million in committed sales and attracting 356 real estate agencies within two weeks of launch.
Why this matters: With research indicating 19% of workers could see half their tasks affected by AI automation, BuddyBee.ai’s digital workforce platform offers small businesses a competitive advantage through 24/7 automated workflow management across multiple business systems.
Australian AI startup BuddyBee.ai has officially launched its agentic AI platform designed to create digital workforces for small and medium enterprises, achieving rapid market traction with $1.9 million in committed sales and 356 real estate agency clients within its first two weeks of operation.
The BuddyBee.ai platform represents a significant advancement in business automation technology, moving beyond traditional AI tools to create what the company describes as “digital workers” capable of managing complete business workflows across multiple systems without human intervention.
Over 35% of Australian businesses have adopted AI or automation technologies as of 2024, with 40% of SMEs currently adopting AI—a 5% increase compared to the previous quarter InvoiceinterchangeNAB Business, according to recent Dynamic Business research, indicating strong market readiness for advanced AI solutions.
Platform launch details
BuddyBee.ai emerged from Hutly’s acquisition of Intellia, an AI company founded by Daniel Pedroso, who now serves as Chief Technology Officer. The platform development and launch occurred within three months of the acquisition, demonstrating rapid commercialisation capabilities.
“AI is no longer a talking point, it’s an economic necessity,” said Jeremy Hastings, Co-founder of BuddyBee.ai. “BuddyBee gives companies a 24/7 digital workforce so people can focus on strategy, relationships and growth.”
The platform’s early success demonstrates strong market demand for comprehensive AI automation solutions. Within two weeks of launch, BuddyBee.ai secured commitments from 356 real estate agencies preparing for onboarding, alongside beta customers across mining and financial services sectors.
Co-founder Daniel Pedroso brings over a decade of AI expertise to the platform development. “I have been deep in AI for over a decade and most enterprises are held back by fragmented systems that don’t integrate effectively,” Pedroso explained. “Buddybee resolves this by acting as a unified orchestration layer powered by agentic AI.”
Agentic AI explained
BuddyBee.ai’s core technology utilises agentic AI, which differs significantly from traditional business automation tools. While conventional automation follows predetermined rules and workflows, agentic AI systems can make independent decisions, adapt to changing conditions, and coordinate multiple tasks across different business platforms.
“Existing agents in the market are hard to wire up and easy to break, whereas BuddyBee orchestrates across your stack—planning, doing, and adapting, so work flows through a digital workforce who access any cloud based platform without manual glue,” Hastings said.
This agentic approach enables the platform to function as digital employees rather than simple automation tools. BuddyBee.ai’s digital workers can understand context, make decisions based on available information, and execute complex multi-step processes that typically require human oversight and coordination.
The platform’s orchestration capabilities address a fundamental challenge for small businesses: integrating multiple software systems that don’t communicate effectively. Rather than requiring manual data transfer between platforms, BuddyBee.ai’s digital workforce manages these connections automatically.
SME workflow benefits
For small and medium enterprises, BuddyBee.ai’s digital workforce platform offers significant operational advantages. The system handles routine administrative tasks that typically consume substantial human resources, allowing business owners and staff to focus on strategic activities and customer relationships.
A practical example demonstrates the platform’s capabilities: when a property inquiry arrives via email, BuddyBee.ai’s digital worker can read and analyse the inquiry, check agent availability in scheduling systems, search property databases for matching listings, generate personalised responses, schedule viewings, update CRM records, and manage follow-up communications—all without human intervention.
The global labour force comprises approximately 3.4 billion people, with research indicating roughly 19% of workers could see 50% or more of their tasks affected by large language models. In Australia, with around 15 million employed, this represents significant workforce transformation potential.
BuddyBee.ai’s target market includes Australia’s 15 million employed workforce, with particular focus on administrative-heavy industries. The real estate sector, employing approximately 244,000 people across 45,000 businesses in Australia, serves as an initial vertical market due to its workflow complexity and system fragmentation.
Industry applications
BuddyBee.ai’s platform design supports multiple industry applications beyond real estate. The agentic AI system can adapt to various business workflows across different sectors, making it suitable for professional services, financial services, mining operations, and government applications.
“The opportunity to rapidly roll this out into a vertical such as real estate made good business sense. This industry is a technology laggard and still highly dependent on administration roles both on and offshore,” Pedroso noted.
For mining services companies, BuddyBee.ai’s digital workforce can coordinate safety reporting, equipment maintenance scheduling, and compliance documentation across multiple systems. In financial services, the platform handles loan application processing, document collection, client communications, and regulatory compliance tasks.
Professional services firms can utilise BuddyBee.ai for client onboarding, document management, project coordination, and billing processes. Government applications include permit processing, citizen inquiry management, and inter-departmental workflow coordination.
“When I first met Dan we hit it off right away,” Hastings said. “I was genuinely blown away by what he had built, with customers spanning across mining and financial services. Dan had deeply considered critical issues such as data, security and scalability—core ingredients to successfully scaling this technology.”
The platform’s broad applicability reflects its foundational approach to workflow orchestration rather than industry-specific automation. This design enables BuddyBee.ai to serve diverse business requirements while maintaining consistent functionality across different operational environments.
“Australia has an opportunity to lead the world in agentic AI adoption, and we intend to be at the forefront of that shift,” Hastings concluded.
As Australian businesses increasingly invest in AI technologies for competitive advantage, BuddyBee.ai’s digital workforce platform positions itself as a comprehensive solution for small and medium enterprises seeking to automate complex business processes while maintaining operational flexibility and scalability.
The platform’s early market success indicates strong business demand for agentic AI solutions that can function as digital employees rather than traditional automation tools, suggesting significant growth potential for comprehensive workflow orchestration technologies in the Australian SME market.
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