Block launches Buzz, a workplace chat for humans and AI agents

Block has launched Buzz, a workplace group chat platform that puts humans and their AI agents in the same conversation, and the company is pairing it with a bigger claim about where computing is headed. On Block’s AI page, the company says “The next era of computing will run itself,” and says its researchers, engineers and product builders are pushing AI toward intelligent financial tools for people and businesses. Block also says it has launched the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation with Anthropic and OpenAI.

The product arrives after a year of company-level signals that Jack Dorsey wants AI to sit closer to decision-making. Block published “From Hierarchy to Intelligence” on March 31, 2026, with Dorsey and Sequoia partner Roelof Botha as the authors, framing AI as a force reshaping company structure. Dorsey has also described changing how he works with agents, moving from direct instructions to asking them what should be done, a shift that treats AI less like software and more like a collaborator.

That posture comes with labor and accountability baggage. In 2026, reporting said Block was cutting nearly half its workforce while embracing AI, with one summary putting the reduction at about 4,200 people, just over 40 percent of staff. Buzz extends that logic into the workplace chat itself, where the people making decisions and the systems helping make them are expected to share the same thread.

Slack is already racing in the same direction. The company markets Slack AI Agents and a “Work with AI agents in Slack” help page, and its developer docs describe agents as autonomous, goal-oriented AI apps that can reason, use tools, maintain context across conversations, plan actions, call external systems and iterate without constant human intervention. Public discussion around Slack has already centered on agents that answer questions and automate team workflows, showing that the market is not waiting for Block to define the category.

Price will shape adoption as much as product design. Slack’s pricing starts with a free tier, then Pro at $7.25 per user a month and Business+ at $12.50, while Microsoft Teams Essentials starts at $4 per user a month and Business Standard at $12.50, with Teams also bundled into broader Microsoft 365 packages. Buzz enters that market with a sharper governance question than a normal chat app: if an AI agent recommends the wrong move or triggers an action, the employer, not the agent, will still have to answer for the result.

Block’s foundation work with Anthropic, OpenAI and the Linux Foundation shows the company understands that agentic AI needs rules as well as ambition. But putting AI agents into the same conversation as workers makes the stakes immediate, because the point of the thread is no longer just communication, it is delegated authority.