Industry-specific AI brings business context to agents handling enterprise workflows. Building around industry processes can help companies address reliability concerns as they automate more tasks.
Infor (US) LLC is developing industry-specific AI agents for several key industries, including industrial manufacturing, aerospace and defense, automotive, and food and beverage. It builds those agents around its existing industry applications, according to Suresh Jayaraman (pictured, right), senior vice president of product management and development at Infor.
“Although the generic agents might work, you will always run into the challenge of not getting a deterministic answer every single time,” he said. “And there will be a lot of hallucinations happening.”
Jayaraman and Rick Rider (left), senior vice president of AI innovation at Infor, spoke with theCUBE Research’s Christophe Bertrand and co-host Alison Kosik at Infor Velocity Week, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed industry-specific AI, micro-vertical configuration and where humans stay in the loop. (* Disclosure below.)
Industry-specific AI starts with micro-vertical detail
Infor initially focused its agents on common bottlenecks and repetitive tasks, Rider explained. Its 2026.10 release adds guardrails through security and scopes.
“Every customer is uniquely different, and out-of-the-box AI does not exist in our world,” he said. “We’re working with customers to say, ‘What do you want?'”
Infor uses common cores shared across similar industries, with lightweight configuration for micro-verticals such as chemicals or heating, ventilation and air conditioning, Rider noted. In food and beverage, receiving details change sharply by product, according to Jayaraman.
“For a dairy, it’s a liquid receipt, which means I need to understand what the fat content of the milk is, the thickness of the milk while I’m doing the receiving function,” he said. “If it’s a protein or red meat, I’m bringing an entire animal into my receiving process. I need to know the country of origin and a few other extra specific configurations.”
Agents can create an order and check demand on their own, but moving one customer’s order to another still requires human approval, Jayaraman explained. Infor is also hiring domain experts to work alongside technologists, according to Rider.
“Finding tech people, programmers, it’s a little bit easier compared to finding the industry-focused people with that deep industry knowledge,” Jayaraman said. “When you’re going in front of the customer, you’re not talking to IT people; you’re actually talking to the business people.”
Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Infor Velocity Week:
(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Infor Velocity Week. Neither Infor, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)