Jack Dorsey did it again.
He built something else. And this time, the other player is artificial intelligence.
Block, his fintech outfit, just dropped Buzz. It is a workplace messenger. It looks a lot like Slack. You get channels. Threads. Direct messages. Voice notes. Code repositories. The basics are all there.
But there is a twist.
A twist that matters.
Buzz treats AI agents like actual colleagues. Not tools. Not chatbots you prompt for a summary. They are members of the team. Equal members.
How Does Buzz Differ from Slack?
Slack is for people. GitHub is for code. Buzz tries to merge them, with AI at the center.
The platform integrates models from Anthropic and OpenAI. These agents have their own profiles. Their own permissions. They join channels. They work on projects autonomously.
“We built it to reduce our dependency on Slack, and GitHub, and we’re sharing so anyone can do the same.” — Jack Dorsey
This is the core value prop. Dorsey wrote this on X. He calls Buzz “truly social AI.”
Most AI today is passive. You chat with a companion. The agent fills your feed. Or agents talk to each other while humans watch. Buzz flips that. People and agents work together in the same network.
It feels different.
Decentralization and Control
Buzz is open-source. It is decentralized.
Why does this matter? Control.
If you use Slack, they own the data. If they shut you out, you are out. Buzz resists this. It is harder to censor. Harder to break during outages. Users have more say in how they use it.
This isn’t Dorsey’s first rodeo since leaving Twitter.
He founded Bluesky. He launched TBDex. He built Bitchat. All decentralized. All peer-to-peer.
Buzz is the first of these to bake AI into the foundation. Not as an add-on. As a core function.
Who Can Use Buzz?
It is currently a Block internal tool being shared out.
Matt Ross, Head of Investor Relations at Block, tested it. He watched agents collaborate in real-time. They worked toward a solution.
Then, the output was available to the whole team. Instantly.
“This work product was then available to everyone… This is going to completely transform how we share.” — Matt Ross
Ross sees a shift in workflow. No more waiting. No more manual handoffs. The work is done. It is shared.
Is It Ready for Everyone?
Buzz is a rival to Slack. A direct one.
But it is also a statement.
Dorsey wants to break the walled gardens. He wants to show that AI and human collaboration can happen on a open protocol.
It is early.
The features are similar to the giants. The difference is the philosophy. And the presence of AI agents as peers.
Whether this catches on with the mass market remains to be seen. For now, it is a tool for Block employees to replace their current stack.
But the door is open. For anyone to join. To see what happens when the bots take a seat at the table.
