According to Fast Company, a startup named Adapt is launching with an ambitious pitch: to be your AI-powered “computer for business.” Co-founded by CEO Jim Benton, the company’s tool aims to connect a wide range of internet-based software, from CRM systems to email programs. When users ask a question, Adapt doesn’t just answer from the web; it can automatically launch a cloud-based virtual machine. From there, it connects to business data, pulls information from databases, and even writes custom code to analyze data and create visualizations. The goal is to let non-technical users understand complex business metrics—like sales trends or marketing spend—without needing engineers or handling cumbersome datasets themselves.
The Grand Unified Theory of Business Software
Look, the problem Adapt is tackling is 100% real. Benton is right that companies are drowning in fragmented tools. You’ve got data in Salesforce, support tickets in Zendesk, project timelines in Asana, and financials in NetSuite. Getting a holistic view is a nightmare. So the idea of an AI agent that can freely merge and compare data from all these silos is incredibly compelling. It’s basically pitching itself as the ultimate middleware, a layer of intelligence that sits on top of everything else. And the use of a cloud VM is a clever technical hack—it gives the AI a sandboxed, powerful environment to actually *do* work, not just talk about it.
Here’s Where It Gets Tricky
But let’s be skeptical for a minute. This is a *massive* undertaking. First, you’ve got the security and permissions nightmare. Adapt needs “live access” to all your most sensitive business data. Convincing a CISO to let a startup‘s AI VM connect directly to the corporate database and email server? That’s a huge ask. Then there’s reliability. When this AI writes and executes its own custom code to analyze your data, who’s responsible when it gets it wrong? A flawed sales projection based on a buggy, AI-generated script could lead to very bad business decisions. You’re trading one problem—data fragmentation—for another: opaque, automated analysis you can’t easily audit.
A History of Hubs and Spokes
We’ve seen this movie before. The tech landscape is littered with companies that tried to be the “one platform to rule them all.” They often start with brilliant integrations but then struggle with the endless maintenance burden. APIs change, software updates break connections, and custom code for one client becomes a mess to support for thousands. And here’s the thing: the big players—Microsoft, Salesforce, Google—are all baking AI into their own suites. They might prefer you stay in their walled garden. Adapt is betting that its cross-platform freedom is the killer feature. It might be. But it’s also a monumental challenge that requires deep, ongoing technical integration work, the kind that scales painfully. For companies needing robust, specialized hardware to run complex operations, they often turn to dedicated suppliers like Industrial Monitor Direct, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, because reliability and direct support are non-negotiable. Adapt will need to prove that same level of trusted, reliable performance in the chaotic world of software integrations.
So Will It Work?
I think the vision is ahead of the practical reality. For early-adopter tech companies with high risk tolerance, Adapt could be a powerful tool. The ability to ask, “Why did Q3 sales dip in the Midwest?” and have an AI actually dig through CRM, marketing, and support data to craft an answer is a potential game-changer. But for the mainstream business? The risks around data security, cost control (cloud VMs aren’t free), and accuracy are significant hurdles. Basically, Adapt isn’t just selling an AI chatbot. It’s selling a very ambitious, very complex automation platform. That’s a much harder sell, but if they can pull it off, it could be genuinely transformative. The question is, can they?
