As companies race to deploy AI, Vercel says it has found a way to get ahead it’s training AI agents to work like its best employees.
The $9.3 billion developer platform, founded by Guillermo Rauch in 2015, now uses AI agents to handle much of the repetitive work previously done by entry-level staff. According to COO Jeanne DeWitt Grosser, one 10-person sales team was reduced to a single person and an AI agent that automates lead qualification, email responses, and client research.
Vercel’s engineers trained the first “lead agent” by shadowing the team’s top performer for six weeks, documenting their workflow, and programming the agent to mimic it. The system learns continuously through manager feedback, refining tone and performance.
Grosser said the goal isn’t layoffs but efficiency, allowing humans to focus on creative and complex work. “Modeling after top performers has always been standard business practice,” she said. “The difference now is that technology lets us accelerate it.”
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Vercel now operates six AI agents and plans to deploy hundreds more within a year, each modeled after the company’s best talent.
