Artificial intelligence is rapidly moving beyond conventional software tools and chatbots, with businesses increasingly exploring AI agents capable of reasoning, executing tasks and working across complex enterprise processes. As organizations adopt multiple AI systems for research, customer engagement, workflows and operations, a new challenge is emerging: how to bring these systems together while maintaining security, governance, accountability and continuity.
Olbrain is seeking to address this challenge through its vision of an Agent OS for enterprises a common operating environment where organizations can build, deploy and govern different types of AI agent systems. The company’s work also extends into deeper AI research through Olbrain Labs, which focuses on the concept of persistent self-identity for AI agents.
In an interaction with A2Z Insider, Olbrain discusses the thinking behind its platform, the changing enterprise AI landscape, the industries where it sees opportunities and its long-term vision for increasingly autonomous machines.
1. What inspired you to build Olbrain, and what problem in enterprise AI are you solving?
The question behind Olbrain started much before the company itself. In 2016, while I was working in AI, I became interested in a fundamental question: what actually makes an AI an agent? Intelligence alone is not enough. An AI may be able to reason, generate, analyse or execute tasks, but an agent also needs continuity it should remain the same identifiable entity over time, with an objective, history, permissions and accountability.
That question eventually led us to begin work on The Machine Brain in 2017. When large language models became widely available, intelligence became much easier to access, but enterprises were still facing another problem: they were beginning to adopt different AI systems for different use cases one for research, another for workflows, another for voice, another for customer engagement, and so on. That creates fragmentation.
So Olbrain today is building an Agent OS for enterprises one operating environment where businesses can build, run and govern different kinds of AI agent systems without having to assemble a disconnected stack of agent platforms from multiple vendors.
At the same time, our research arm, Olbrain Labs, continues to work on the deeper problem that first led us here: persistent self-identity for AI agents.
2. How does Olbrain help businesses deploy AI agents securely and reliably?
Olbrain is not a vendor from whom businesses buy different ready-made AI agents. It is an Agent OS on which a business can build, run and govern its own agent systems around the problems and workflows unique to that organization.
A business may want to agentify research, client delivery, recruitment, sales, operations or another repetitive cognitive process. On Olbrain, that business objective can be turned into an agent system comprising one or more AI agents, together with the workflows, tools, data connections and governance required to operate it.
What is unusual about Olbrain is that much of the building work is itself performed by agents. A lead orchestrator works with specialist agents that can understand the business requirement, design the workflow, build the agent system, deploy it and help govern it once it is running.
This means a company does not need to assemble a different technology stack every time it wants to agentify another part of the business. The same operating system can progressively support more agent systems across the organization.
Security and governance sit underneath this architecture. Businesses retain control over access, human approvals and enterprise data, while actions can be traced back to the agent that performed them.
Through Olbrain Labs, the company is also working on persistent self-identity for AI agents examining how an enterprise can establish that an agent operating months from now is still the same accountable agent that was originally given a particular objective or permission.
3. What makes Olbrain different from other AI agent platforms in the market?
The simplest answer is that we are not building one type of AI agent. We are building the operating system on which an enterprise can build and run many different kinds of agent systems.
An organization may need research agents, workflow agents, conversational agents, voice agents, finance agents, sales agents or highly specialized agents for internal processes. Our goal is to give enterprises one common environment for all of them.
But underneath that product vision is a deeper research thesis. Most of the industry is focused on what an AI agent can do. At Olbrain Labs, we are also asking: who is the agent?
If an agent operates for months or years, learns from interactions, changes models, receives new permissions and works across multiple systems, how does it remain the same accountable entity? That is why our research is focused on persistent self-identity for AI agents.
Our broader thesis is simple: LLMs provide intelligence. The Machine Brain provides agency. We believe that as agentic systems become more autonomous, identity, continuity and accountability will become foundational infrastructure rather than optional features.
4. What are some key industries or use cases where Olbrain is seeing the most impact?
We are seeing opportunities across research, consulting, recruitment, customer engagement, commerce, financial services and enterprise operations.
The specific use cases vary widely. A business may use Olbrain to build an agent system for research, client delivery, recruitment, sales, customer support, internal workflows or other repetitive cognitive processes.
What is interesting to us is that the common denominator is not really the industry. The strongest opportunities appear wherever people are repeatedly gathering information, making decisions, coordinating across systems and executing cognitive workflows. Those are increasingly becoming agentifiable processes.
We believe businesses will gradually move away from asking, “Where can we use one AI agent?” and start asking, “How much of our organization can we agentify?” That is the transition Olbrain is being built for.
5. What is your vision for Olbrain and the future of AI-powered enterprises?
Our immediate vision is for Olbrain to become the operating system for the Agentic Enterprise. We believe companies will increasingly have large numbers of AI agents working alongside people and existing software systems.
Those agents will perform research, make decisions, execute workflows, interact with customers, use enterprise systems and increasingly interact with other agents. At that scale, enterprises will need more than intelligence. They will need a common operating layer for deployment, orchestration, permissions, governance, memory, accountability and identity.
That is what we are building with Olbrain.
But our vision goes much further. In 2017, we articulated what we call Vision 2042, a long-term roadmap for extending agency in machines. The first stage is The Machine Brain, focused on Digital Agents. The next stage is The Cybernetic Brain, intended to extend agency into Embodied Agents operating in the physical world. And ultimately, our ambition is to work toward The Positronic Brain, where highly autonomous agents could operate over very long time horizons, even in environments where continuous human supervision is not possible.
The underlying question remains the same across all three stages: how do we create machines that are not merely intelligent, but capable of maintaining a coherent identity, objective and continuity over time?
That is the long-term problem Olbrain is trying to solve. Today, we begin with enterprises. Over time, we believe agency will extend from digital systems to the physical world and eventually far beyond it.
Olbrain’s approach reflects a broader shift in enterprise AI from using isolated AI applications toward building interconnected systems of AI agents that can operate across business functions. By focusing on an operating layer for deployment, orchestration, governance and accountability, alongside research into persistent agent identity, the company is pursuing a vision that extends beyond today’s AI applications. As the enterprise AI landscape continues to evolve, Olbrain’s stated ambition is to help organizations move toward a future where AI agents can work continuously alongside people, software and, eventually, physical systems.