Vendasta launches ‘Custom AI Employees’ to staff up small businesses

Summary

Canadian SaaS company Vendasta has launched "Custom AI Employees," configurable AI agents that it says can be deployed by small and mid-sized businesses in minutes to handle sales, support and marketing workflows. The agents are trained on each customer’s processes, rules and data, and run inside Vendasta’s unified platform so they can take actions across CRM, marketing automation and other tools rather than just chat. Early adopters cited in the release report cutting proposal-writing from hours to minutes and turning years of internal pricing and campaign data into a reusable, AI-accessible knowledge base. Vendasta frames the product as an "AI workforce" for local businesses that have vision but chronic staff shortages, pitching it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to close the automation gap between SMBs and large enterprises. The move also signals how mid-market platforms are racing to define their own AI-native abstractions—here, "employees"—rather than simply bolting ChatGPT-style assistants onto existing dashboards.