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It might sound crazy to some, launching an entirely new product line while your flagship business has shed two-thirds of its paper value. But Howie Liu, the founder and CEO of Airtable, suggests it\u2019s the sanest thing he could do.<\/p>\n
The company that investors valued at $11.7 billion during the zero-interest-rate fervor of 2021 now trades on secondary markets at roughly $4 billion. But Airtable has raised $1.4 billion total, and Liu says the company still has half of that in the bank while \u201cthrowing off cash.\u201d The valuation collapse affected investor returns and employee stock options, but didn\u2019t undermine the business itself.<\/p>\n
Liu\u2019s response is to launch Superagent, an AI agent he suggests could eventually eclipse Airtable itself. It\u2019s Airtable\u2019s first standalone product in its 13-year history, and captures both where the company is headed and the reality of the current AI moment: every serious software player is racing to prove they can deliver on agents.<\/p>\n
To understand what makes this move especially interesting, consider what Airtable is: a no-code platform that democratizes app-building. It\u2019s essentially a supercharged database that lets anyone create custom software tailored to their workflows. The company now employs more than 700 people and serves over 500,000 organizations, including 80% of the Fortune 100. This isn\u2019t a struggling startup but instead a mature business betting its future on a new architecture.<\/p>\n
Superagent represents Liu\u2019s bet on \u201cmulti-agent coordination\u201d\u2014a system where you ask a question and get not one AI assistant fumbling through sequential tasks, but a coordinating agent that deploys specialists working in parallel. \u201cYou\u2019re not prompting an AI,\u201d Liu explains. \u201cYou\u2019re orchestrating a team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how it works: When you ask Superagent about expanding your athleisure brand into Europe (an example from Liu), the system first builds a research plan, identifying what needs investigation and surfacing dimensions you didn\u2019t think to ask about. Then it deploys specialized agents in parallel \u2013 one investigating financials, another analyzing competitive positioning, another reviewing management and news. Finally, it synthesizes everything into a finished deliverable.<\/p>\n
The output isn\u2019t a wall of text. It\u2019s an interactive market analysis with demographic breakdowns, competitive presence mapped visually, and expansion timelines you can filter and explore. \u201cWhat if every person could have New York Times-quality data visualization built for every task they have,\u201d Liu told me over Zoom last week. \u201cThis would have been unfathomable ten years ago, or five years ago, where you don\u2019t get that quality of output \u2013 you just get text. But to be able to now get truly extremely high quality, rich interactive outputs as a default format, I think that\u2019s a game changer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Techcrunch event<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSan Francisco<\/span> The distinction Liu draws between Superagent and competitors is technical. He name-checks Anthropic\u2019s AI agent Claude and Manus (a newer entrant in the AI research space that\u2019s being acquired by Meta) as the only two products with \u201ca true, generally capable, long-running and really smart agent architecture.\u201d Most other so-called agents, he argues, are merely \u201cLLM powered workflows\u201d \u2013 predetermined steps with AI calls mixed in, not true autonomous agents that can course-correct and backtrack.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a fine line in a market where everyone is suddenly launching AI agents. OpenAI kicked off 2025 by launching new agent-building tools, while Notion, Harvey, and hundreds of other companies have since added agent functionality. In a market steeped with agent claims, Liu\u2019s insistence that Superagent is different will need to prove itself in practice.<\/p>\n In a blog post announcing the product, Liu provides examples of what Superagent can do. Ask it to evaluate Google as a three-year investment opportunity, he writes, and you get a structured assessment with citations to earnings calls, defensibility analysis against OpenAI and Anthropic, and risk factors you hadn\u2019t considered. Ask it to brief you on Wells Fargo\u2019s AI strategy before pitching them, and you get their regulatory posture, recent AI investments, and specific pain points your product addresses. The system pulls from premium data sources like FactSet, Crunchbase, SEC filings, and earnings transcripts.<\/p>\n The move caps a transformation for Airtable, which Liu has been repositioning as an \u201cAI-native platform.\u201d Last fall, the company brought in David Azose, formerly the engineering lead for ChatGPT\u2019s business products at OpenAI, as CTO. At the same time, it acquired DeepSky (formerly Gradient), an AI agents startup that had raised $40 million. Superagent will operate semi-independently from Airtable, helmed by DeepSky\u2019s founding trio.<\/p>\n The pricing was still being hammered out as of last week, but it sounded poised to follow the emerging AI products playbook: $20 per month per user at the entry tier, up to $200 for power users, with generous inference credits. \u201cWe\u2019re not trying to optimize for profit margin right now,\u201d Liu says.<\/p>\n Whether Superagent becomes the trillion-dollar market Liu envisions or a big bet that doesn\u2019t pan out remains to be seen. The competition is not trivial, and the distinctions Liu draws between \u201creal agents\u201d and the rest may not matter to customers if the others can deliver adequate results faster and cheaper.<\/p>\n But for a CEO whose company has lost $7.7 billion in paper valuation while retaining most of its actual capital, the move shows a willingness to bet on the future rather than protect the present. Indeed, Liu has reframed that earlier valuation compression as a recruiting advantage, telling employees they\u2019re getting \u201cequity that\u2019s actually much more attractively priced than the $11 billion valuation\u201d with significant upside if his bets pay off. He has capital for strategic acquisitions and doesn\u2019t need to raise another round.<\/p>\n Asked if he thinks Superagent is ultimately the bigger opportunity, Liu shrugs \u2014 he\u2019s not ruling it out. Airtable \u201cwill probably be larger for at least the near term than any new products that we do, including Superagent,\u201d he says. \u201cBut I also like being able to bet on Superagent. Optionality is a good thing.\u201d<\/p>\n This is Liu\u2019s version of what he calls \u201cwartime\u201d leadership \u2013 a term he admits he once eschewed as needlessly violent but now embraces as apt. \u201cBeing very fast on the draw to be able to adapt,\u201d he says, is \u201cthe most value-creative way to run things right now.\u201d He quickly adds, \u201cIt\u2019s also the most exciting way to do things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOctober 13-15, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n