Bombos teamBy Piet Baudoin · 29 September 2026
OpenAI and Meta both released an AI agent today that works all day, and one of the two aims straight at small businesses. Today: what Dots and Muse can do, and why the smartest story of the week is about coworkers.
What is OpenAI’s Dots?
At its annual developer day in San Francisco, OpenAI released Dots today. A Dot is an assistant that is always on and keeps working in the background on a goal you give it. It has its own computer in the cloud, can work with more than four thousand apps and learns from what you tell it in return. You message it in ChatGPT, Slack or Teams. Sam Altman: “Dots are remarkably capable, always-on agents built to handle really anything you can think of”.
You start with one Dot and give it a name. Later, OpenAI wants whole teams of Dots to work together. Chief financial officer Sarah Friar told CNBC that they help you “have a better day, be more productive, and maybe get home earlier.”
Dots is available from today on the most expensive plans, Pro and Business Premium, in countries where it is offered. Whether the Netherlands is one of them, the reports don’t say.
TechCrunch writes that a Dot pursues its goal “with minimal oversight”. That is exactly where your question as a business owner sits: what may it do without your approval? More in who is liable when an AI agent makes a mistake.
Source: CNBC, 29 September 2026 and TechCrunch, 29 September 2026
What does Meta’s Muse do for small businesses?
The same day, Meta brought its assistant Muse to small businesses. Muse works with programs you already have, such as QuickBooks, Shopify, Slack, Canva and Zoom, and with your Instagram and Facebook page. Meta explains why: “They told us they’re short on hours, not ideas.”
Muse for small businesses is free up to a limit; if you want more, you take a subscription. And according to Reuters, Meta says Muse does not publish, send or buy anything without the user’s permission.
So two of the biggest makers are now aiming at your kind of company. The question is no longer whether an AI agent is coming for you, but which one, and who sets it up.
Source: TechCrunch, 29 September 2026 and IEX via Reuters, 29 September 2026
How do you teach a team to work with AI?
The best story of the week comes from healthcare. At Kaiser Permanente, an American healthcare organization, management and unions reached an agreement on AI. Researchers at MIT Sloan described how it came about. Employees were afraid for their jobs and wanted a say. So a few coworkers were trained first: “coworkers who would first learn how to use the AI tools and then help colleagues adapt.”
That idea came from their own history. Twenty years earlier, with the electronic health record, coworkers who already knew the system became the go-to people for everyone else. The researchers: “The parties engaged in genuine dialogue and learning”.
In a company of twenty people it works the same way. One coworker learns it first and brings the others along. See how a service business becomes AI-native.
Source: MIT Sloan, 28 September 2026
What are people saying about it?
A developer had Claude, Anthropic’s assistant, do a big job overnight and stayed up:
I stayed up too late last night waiting for an issue to finish so I could /goal the next large batch of work. I was struggling to comprehend what 5.5 was asking of me and I asked it to reword, that I was tired. Claude made the decision for me, wrapped up the issue, re-explained it, and ended with "go to bed".
u/Malenx_ · 27 September 2026
Closer to home, a Dutch engineer who has tracked hours for an entire career now books them with one sentence. The post is in Dutch:
Mijn hele werkbare leven werk ik voor en met projectorganisaties. Uren bijhouden is dus een tweede natuur. Heel lang in excel - yes good old excel - maar sinds kort een systeem. Gelijk koppeling met projectadministratie, CRM, etc. en ook de mogelijkheid om tegen ChatGPT te zeggen, boek even zoveel uur op project x y z. Nu zijn de meeste uren 'intern' (of te wel investering). Maar toch.
@deheij · 28 September 2026
In English: my whole working life I have worked for and with project organizations, so tracking hours is second nature. For a long time in Excel, yes good old Excel, but recently a system. It links straight to project administration, CRM and so on, and lets you tell ChatGPT to book that many hours on project x y z. Most hours are now “internal” (in other words, investment). But still.
And under the Muse announcement, an adviser to small-business owners in Nashville, who sells advice too, replied:
@DinaPowellMcC Would be nice if your team set up a help desk with humans before asking owners to trust you with their business operations.
@daniel_askew · 29 September 2026
An assistant that tells you to go to bed, and a business owner who wants to talk to a human first. Both are about trust.
Where are we headed?
Dots and Muse both keep working while you do something else. So the work shifts from doing it yourself to approving what is ready.
My expectation: within two years, a small or midsize company will have at least one AI agent that works all week. The difference then is not which one you pick, but whether your team knows what it may do and who steers it. As at Kaiser Permanente, the company where people bring each other along wins.
Bombos takes care of that for you: we set it up on your work, teach your team to work with it, and after that you can do it yourself.
What does this mean for your company?
The always-on AI agent is here. The big makers build it for everyone; what it does at your company depends on who sets it up and who approves.
Bombos starts with one task. With processing timesheets, Bombos prepares the hours from photos of timesheets for AFAS, one of the largest Dutch business software makers, and you approve. Our promise: by the end of the week the hours are done, without you having to chase anyone. That is the first task, not the whole offer: after that your company does more work with the same people, at a higher quality.
Sources
Every source was opened on 29 September 2026 and every quote appears in it word for word.
CNBC: OpenAI DevDay live updates (29 September 2026) · TechCrunch: OpenAI launches Dots, its bubbly agentic avatar (29 September 2026) · TechCrunch: Meta is expanding its AI agent Muse to small businesses (29 September 2026) · IEX: AI-agent Muse nu ook naar kleine bedrijven (29 September 2026) · MIT Sloan: What employers can learn from Kaiser Permanente’s AI labor deal (28 September 2026) · OpenAI on X: Introducing dots (29 September 2026) · Reddit: u/Malenx_ in r/ClaudeCode (27 September 2026)