Competition is heating up among leading enterprise technology companies for the title of the AI agent that corporate users use first at work.

Companies with varied backgrounds, from data infrastructure software firms to business application companies, have entered a race to build AI agent platforms that can use data spread across multiple internal corporate systems.

Companies that previously had little reason to clash because they operated in different arenas are increasingly facing off head-to-head as they reshape strategies around AI agents.

It has become less unusual to see Snowflake, a data analytics platform, cooperate with Salesforce, known for cloud CRM, and SAP, widely known for ERP, while also competing over AI agent platforms.

It reflects intertwined interests among companies that see becoming the No. 1 AI agent platform in the enterprise market as critical to leading the enterprise technology sector.

Statements from companies that have entered the enterprise AI agent race can be summed up as offering AI agents that enable the safest and most effective use of internal corporate data, including in their own and other companies' systems. Their target users span both IT departments and business users.

Snowflake has expanded its scope so corporate users can analyse data not only on its data platform but also in SAP ERP and Salesforce CRM. Salesforce, in turn, is positioning itself to enable Snowflake data to be used in its AI agents. For companies that use SAP, Salesforce and Snowflake, it could be a situation where one must be chosen.

As technologies such as MCP (Model Context Protocol), which enables AI to access data in external systems, evolve, enterprise technology companies seeking a spot in AI agent platforms appear to be moving faster.

Companies whose strength is data platforms are pushing upward into applications. Companies positioned on the applications side are expanding investment related to the data domain below.

Microsoft recently unveiled three new products at its Build 2026 conference to help AI understand enterprise context. Amir Netz (아미르 네츠), CTO of Microsoft Fabric, said, "Enterprise AI should be like an insider who knows how an organization works," and stressed that "for agents to operate reliably, they need the organization's memory, or a 'context layer.'"

Snowflake, a cloud data platform, also used its annual Snowflake Summit to stress a platform strategy for AI to understand enterprise context and unveiled a range of services that can use it. It also made clear its intent to go beyond being a data storage and analytics platform and expand its role as a gateway for companies to use AI agents.

Databricks, a competitor to Snowflake, on the 17th announced an agent called Genie One that helps business teams automate and coordinate work based on all data, whether structured or unstructured, analytical or operational, and inside or outside Databricks.

Genie One is included in Databricks' AI product suite, Genie. Databricks highlights the Genie Ontology, a network of all knowledge derived from all members and elements within an organization, including data, documents, tags, content, apps and people. The company describes it as a new self-improving context layer that supports understanding a business through data, one of the most difficult tasks in enterprise AI.

SAP also set out a strategy at its Sapphire 2026 conference held in Orlando, Florida in May that the battleground in AI competition is enterprise context and governance, not models. SAP CTO Philipp Herzig said, "LLMs are not a differentiator. It doesn't matter whether you use an OpenAI model or an Anthropic model. What matters is whether the agent knows the right business entities, can access the right data, and can be tested with real enterprise data."

Glean Technologies, which started with enterprise SaaS search, is also expanding its enterprise AI platform business that runs AI models and agents based on corporate data. Glean is expanding its lineup of enterprise autonomous agents and AI work solutions that use organization-wide data, based on capabilities built in its enterprise search business.

Glean supports building horizontal AI agents based on data sources across an organization. The company says that through its agent development platform offered on the AWS Marketplace, companies can build systems that apply AI to operating environments while maintaining security.

According to SiliconANGLE, Glean Vice President of Partnerships Joubin Irani (주빈 이라니) said, "Glean is an enterprise AI platform that helps employees find answers," adding, "You can build agents and perform tasks based on real company data, so each department can use the company's knowledge base while adopting AI securely."