Jack Dorsey is making his next big move: a workplace group chat platform called Buzz, built from the ground up with AI agents as first-class participants alongside human users. The product puts Dorsey in direct competition with Slack and Microsoft Teams — a crowded but increasingly contested space as AI transforms how work actually gets done.
What Is Buzz?
Buzz is a group chat platform for teams that treats AI agents not as bots bolted onto the side of a conversation, but as genuine participants within it. The core premise is that modern work increasingly involves both humans and autonomous AI systems acting in concert — and existing tools weren't designed with that in mind.
Most workplace chat tools have retrofitted AI as an add-on: Slack's AI summarizes threads, Copilot sits inside Teams, and so on. Buzz appears to rethink the collaboration layer itself, building agent participation into the architecture rather than layering it on top.
Why This Matters Now
The timing is deliberate. Enterprises and startups alike are rapidly deploying AI agents to handle everything from customer support to code review to internal data retrieval. But routing those agents through existing chat infrastructure is clunky — agents respond in threads, get lost in notification noise, and lack clear status or accountability within a conversation.
A platform designed around human-agent collaboration from day one sidesteps those limitations. If Buzz delivers on that premise, it could appeal strongly to technical teams already running multi-agent workflows who find Slack's model increasingly inadequate.
Dorsey's Track Record in Communication Tools
This isn't Dorsey's first time rethinking how people communicate. He co-founded Twitter, reshaping public discourse, and more recently stepped back from Block (formerly Square) to focus on Bitchat, a Bluetooth-based messaging protocol. Buzz represents a different angle — enterprise and team communication rather than consumer social — but the throughline is an interest in reimagining communication infrastructure at a foundational level.
Dorsey has been publicly critical of bloated enterprise software and has signaled interest in building leaner, more opinionated tools. Buzz fits that philosophy.
The Competitive Landscape
Slack, now owned by Salesforce, has been investing heavily in its own AI features, including AI-powered search, summaries, and the Agentforce integration. Microsoft Teams has Copilot deeply embedded across the Microsoft 365 stack. Both have massive distribution advantages.
But incumbent distribution hasn't always protected against well-timed challengers — Slack itself disrupted email and IRC-style tools by offering a cleaner, more modern paradigm. The question is whether AI-native collaboration is a strong enough forcing function to drive switching behavior, particularly among startups and technical teams who are more willing to migrate tooling.
Implications for Founders and Teams
- Startups building AI-heavy workflows should watch Buzz closely — if agents are treated as peers in conversations rather than webhooks, the operational model for running agent-assisted teams changes significantly.
- Founders pitching AI-native products may find Buzz a useful proof point that the market is ready for tools where AI and humans share a workspace, not just a dashboard.
- Teams evaluating Slack vs. alternatives now have a potentially credible third option backed by a high-profile founder with a track record of building communication products at scale.
Details on pricing, availability, and the underlying agent protocol remain sparse at this stage. But Dorsey entering workplace chat is a signal that the next wave of competition in enterprise communication won't be fought on features like emoji reactions or video calls — it'll be fought on who builds the best infrastructure for a world where your teammates aren't all human.
