Attio says MCP usage grew 50% month over month, with roughly 36 to 37m MCP calls this month, per CEO Nicolas Sharp.
Nicolas Sharp says early agent products were skeuomorphic, copying roles like the SDR, when agents should give teams leverage to research thousands of daily sign-ups.
Nicolas Sharp argues thin tools that merely access other tools will be hard to defend, with value shifting to systems of record and workflow platforms that govern data.
Attio rebuilds its CRM as infrastructure for AI agents
Attio is rebuilding its CRM as infrastructure that agents can use directly, not only people. Sharp argues that software has been limited by how much a human can do on a computer, and agents remove that limit. The lasting value then sits in systems of record that hold context and govern data, while thin tools that only reach other tools lose their footing.
Takeaways
Agent usage on Attio is growing fast. Sharp says MCP usage among leading-edge customers is growing 50% month over month, with roughly 36 to 37m MCP calls this month. Host Sebastian Johnson cites earlier figures of about 80,000 active agents and 11m MCP calls a month.
Software is becoming infrastructure for machines. Sharp says software is moving from tools driven by humans to infrastructure serving machines at human-level complexity. Attio is now accessible as a database through SQL, holds tens of millions of records per object type, and ingests event data such as website visits through interfaces.
Agents will expand software, not end it. Asked about an eight-figure compute deal, Sharp says costs rise with usage but revenue and the customer base are growing well. He expects agents to bring an explosion in the utility of software and is very bullish on the market.
Agents should add leverage, not copy roles. Sharp says early agent products were skeuomorphic, such as turning an SDR into an SDR agent. The better use is work no person could do, like researching every one of thousands of daily sign-ups, while people stay central to customer-facing work.
Dedicated agents beat unified tools. Sharp says unified tools often fall short of dedicated ones. Attio's benchmarks show Ask Attio gives results similar to ChatGPT on the same underlying model with about a 6x time reduction, thanks to the right model and specialised sub-agents.
Thin tool wrappers are hard to defend. Sharp says software that only gives access to another tool will be hard to defend, even in the short term. Value sits in systems of record and workflow platforms that govern data, and Attio's universal context links calls, emails and support tickets to entities.
London works as a base for a global company. Sharp calls London the best city in the world, citing its talent pool and central time zone. Attio has always aimed to win globally, and he says belief in building from Europe has grown.
What comes next
Sharp says agents are the latest of two or three abstraction layers added to the software stack.
Setting up complex systems will become a consultative conversation with an agent that needs little technical skill, much as Lovable lets non-engineers build software.
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