Gloat Enters The Crowded War For AI Agents in HR

Gloat Enters The Crowded War For AI Agents in HR by joshbersin · Published March 31, 2026 · Updated March 31, 2026 This week Gloat, a pioneer in skills intelligence and talent marketplace, launched a bold entry into the world of AI Agents for HR. It’s an interesting move, demonstrating how competition for core HR technology has emerged. Simply explained, Gloat is offering a toolset (Gloat Agentic HR) which uses all the business rules and security you have in Oracle, Workday, or SuccessFactors and lets you quickly build AI Agents that work in MS Copilot, Teams, Slack, and other AI apps. Application Layers of Agentic AI Let me start with a little architecture discussion. In the world of AI agents, there are essentially five layers. At the bottom we have the systems of record that store, update, and maintain information about our companies. These HCM applications sit on top of complex databases which hold information about our financials, customers, people, inventory, and products. This is the world of Workday, SAP, Oracle, UKG, and other ERP systems. On top of these workflow-systems we have a layer of cross system applications. Since no vendor does everything, we build portals, mobile apps, and workflows that traverse these systems as well as hundreds of specialized applications like the time-tracking system, the LMS, the ATS, the IT provisioning system and many more. The average large company has 400 such apps and more than 100 touch employees in some way. Over the last twe...