At a Glance
- Airtable launches its first stand-alone AI product, Superagent, after its valuation fell from $11.7 B to roughly $4 B.
- CEO Howie Liu says the agent could eventually eclipse Airtable itself and is part of a broader AI-native strategy.
- The company still holds about half of its $1.4 B raised, and Superagent will start at $20/month per user.
Why it matters: Airtable’s pivot shows a mature no-code platform betting on AI agents to drive growth while its valuation collapse forces it to innovate aggressively.
Airtable’s new AI agent, Superagent, was unveiled in San Francisco on October 13-15, 2026 as the company’s first stand-alone product in its 13-year history. The launch comes after the platform’s valuation collapsed from $11.7 B during the 2021 zero-interest-rate boom to roughly $4 B today. Despite the drop, Airtable has raised a total of $1.4 B and still has about half of that in cash, according to CEO Howie Liu. Liu says the company is “throwing off cash” while keeping enough to fund ambitious bets.
Airtable’s Valuation Shift
Airtable’s market cap slide has affected investor returns and employee stock options, but Liu stresses that the business fundamentals remain intact. The company employs more than 700 people, serves over 500,000 organizations, and powers 80 % of the Fortune 100. The valuation loss, $7.7 B in paper terms, has been reframed as a recruiting advantage: employees receive equity priced at a much lower valuation with upside if the new bets pay off.
Superagent: The New AI Agent
Superagent is positioned as a “multi-agent coordination” platform. Liu describes it as a system where, instead of prompting a single AI, you orchestrate a team of specialized agents that work in parallel. “You’re not prompting an AI,” Liu explains. “You’re orchestrating a team.”
Key Features
- Research Planning – Builds a plan that surfaces hidden dimensions.
- Parallel Specialists – Deploys agents for finance, competition, management, and news.
- Synthesis – Combines findings into a concise, interactive deliverable.
- Premium Data Sources – Pulls from FactSet, Crunchbase, SEC filings, and earnings transcripts.
In a Zoom conversation, Liu said, “What if every person could have New York Times-quality data visualization built for every task they have? This would have been unfathomable 10 years ago, or five years ago, where you don’t get that quality of output – 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’s a game changer.”
Competitive Landscape
Liu distinguishes Superagent from competitors by calling it a “real agent” versus the “LLM-powered workflows” that dominate the market. He cites Anthropic’s Claude and Manus-an AI research entrant being acquired by Meta-as the only two products with a truly capable, long-running agent architecture. In contrast, most other agents are predetermined steps with AI calls, lacking autonomy to course-correct.
The market is crowded: OpenAI launched new agent-building tools in 2025, and companies like Notion and Harvey have added agent functionality. Superagent’s success will hinge on proving its technical edge in practice.
Leadership and Strategy
Last fall, Airtable hired David Azose, former engineering lead for ChatGPT’s business products at OpenAI, as CTO. The company also acquired DeepSky (formerly Gradient), an AI agent startup that raised $40 M. Superagent will operate semi-independently, helmed by DeepSky’s founding trio.
Liu says the pricing will follow the emerging AI playbook: $20/month per user at the entry tier, up to $200 for power users, with generous inference credits. “We’re not trying to optimize for profit margin right now,” Liu says. He acknowledges that whether Superagent becomes a trillion-dollar market or a risky bet remains to be seen. “The competition is not trivial, and the distinctions I draw between ‘real agents’ and the rest may not matter to customers if the others can deliver adequate results faster and cheaper.”
Pricing and Future Outlook
Superagent’s pricing strategy reflects a focus on growth over margin. Liu notes that Airtable will probably be larger for the near term than any new product, including Superagent. “But I also like being able to bet on Superagent. Optionality is a good thing,” he says. He calls this approach “wartime leadership,” a term he now embraces as “the most value-creative way to run things right now,” adding, “It’s also the most exciting way to do things.”
In sum, Airtable’s launch of Superagent signals a bold pivot toward AI-native solutions, leveraging its no-code foundation to deliver coordinated, data-rich agent outputs. The move is a direct response to a steep valuation collapse, turning a paper loss into a strategic investment in the future of software building.
