Confluent, Inc., a leader in data streaming, has announced the launch of Streaming Agents, a new feature in Confluent Cloud for Apache Flink®. This capability is designed to make it easier for businesses to build and scale AI agents that can monitor, reason, and act on real-time data.
Streaming Agents aims to remove barriers in deploying enterprise-grade agentic artificial intelligence by combining data processing with AI workflows. It provides secure connections to all parts of a business, including large language models, embedding models, tools, and other systems. This innovation is expected to speed up the adoption of agentic AI, improve workflow efficiency, reduce time to value, and open doors to new business opportunities.
“Agentic AI is on every organization’s roadmap. But most companies are stuck in prototype purgatory, falling behind as others race toward measurable outcomes,” said Shaun Clowes, Chief Product Officer at Confluent. “Even your smartest AI agents are flying blind if they don’t have fresh business context. Streaming Agents simplifies the messy work of integrating the tools and data that create real intelligence, giving organizations a solid foundation to deploy AI agents that drive meaningful change across the business.”
Research from IDC shows that between 2023 and 2024, organisations ran an average of 23 generative AI proofs of concept, but only three reached production. Of those, just 62 per cent met expectations. While frameworks make it simple to begin working with AI agents, many companies face difficulties integrating real-time data. This often leads to unreliable results and hallucinations, preventing businesses from realising the full potential of agentic AI.
“While most enterprises are investing in agentic AI, their data architectures can’t support the autonomous decision-making capabilities these systems require,” said Stewart Bond, Vice President of Data Intelligence and Integration Software at IDC. “Organizations should prioritise agentic AI solutions that offer easy, secure integration and leverage real-time data for the essential context needed for intelligent action.”
How Streaming Agents Work
Streaming Agents bring agentic AI into stream processing pipelines, allowing teams to build and manage event-driven agents with Apache Kafka® and Apache Flink®. These agents can use real-time contextual data to adapt, communicate with other systems, and make intelligent decisions as conditions change.
The agents are designed to be always active, processing high volumes of data and responding instantly to signals with reasoning similar to human operators. For example, they can track competitor pricing across ecommerce sites in real time and adjust a retailer’s prices automatically to remain competitive.
Confluent aims to provide businesses with a reliable way to develop and scale intelligent AI agents that can deliver measurable value in real time.
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