Mid-2026 Check-In: AI Agents Move from Demos to Production
After two years of progress, AI agents entered enterprise production in mid-2026, with automated workflows becoming standard.
AI Coding Agents Become 2026's Hottest Trend
From code completion to autonomous coding, AI coding agents are changing how software is built.
Moonshot AI Releases Kimi K2: A Trillion-Parameter MoE Model, Open-Sourced
Moonshot AI unveils Kimi K2 with 1 trillion total parameters — the largest open model at launch — excelling at agentic and coding tasks.
GitHub Copilot Gets a Coding Agent: Autonomous Background Tasks and Pull Requests
At Microsoft Build 2025, GitHub introduced the Copilot coding agent — it takes tasks, runs in the background on GitHub Actions and opens PRs.
Devin 2.0 Released: Price Drops from $500 to $20 a Month
Cognition releases Devin 2.0 with a collaborative IDE and a starting price slashed from $500 to $20 per month, taking the AI software engineer mainstream.
Manus Goes Viral Overnight: The General AI Agent Whose Invite Codes Sold for Thousands
Butterfly Effect launched the general-purpose agent Manus on March 6, 2025; the invite-only rollout sparked a code-hunting frenzy with a 2M+ waitlist.
A Researcher for Everyone: How Deep Research Became 2025's Standard AI Feature
From Gemini (Dec 2024) to OpenAI (Feb 2025) to the whole industry, autonomous research agents went from novelty to table stakes within a year.
The Starting Gun of the Agent Era: OpenAI Fires Off Operator and Deep Research
In January-February 2025, OpenAI launched Operator, a browser-driving agent, and Deep Research, an autonomous research agent — agents became products.
Gemini 2.0 Launches: Google Declares the Agentic Era, Debuts Project Mariner
Google released Gemini 2.0 on December 11, 2024 — built for agents — and demoed Project Mariner, an agent that drives your browser.