Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Block, announced on Tuesday (July 21) the launch of Buzz, an open-source group chat platform that positions AI agents as first-class citizens in workplace conversations. The move represents the most direct challenge yet to Slack and Microsoft Teams' dominance in the enterprise collaboration market.
Built by Block — the company behind Square, Cash App, Afterpay, and Tidal — Buzz was described by Dorsey himself as "model-agnostic, decentralized, self-sovereign, and open source." In practice, teams can self-host the platform, customize every aspect of the source code, and integrate any AI model — from Claude to GPT, Gemini, or local models — without being locked into a single provider.
Buzz's most disruptive differentiator is how it treats AI agents: not as bots bolted onto a chat room, but as participants with capabilities equivalent to humans. An agent can be summoned into a thread, given tasks, execute code, review PRs on GitHub, and report results — all within the same conversation flow. The platform also natively incorporates GitHub project management, eliminating the need to switch between windows and contexts.
"We're launching Buzz — a new group chat platform for teams of people and agents of all sizes, built to reduce our dependency on Slack and GitHub," Dorsey wrote on X, where the announcement garnered more than 10K likes.
The timing is strategic. Startups and big tech are racing to define how AI agents should operate in collaborative environments. Paradigm recently launched Centaur, described as a "virtual employee" that lives inside Slack. But Buzz takes a more radical approach: instead of fitting agents into existing platforms, it rebuilds the platform from scratch with agents at the center.
For Dorsey, the move also reinforces his long-held thesis on digital sovereignty, which has driven his advocacy for Bitcoin and Bluesky. An open, self-hostable Buzz fits perfectly with that vision. The real test, however, will be enterprise adoption. Slack and Teams have years of advantage in integrations, compliance, and scale. Buzz is beginning its journey now — but it arrives with a value proposition that shakes the very foundations of the market.
Source: TechCrunch
