AI for business: April 2024

Terasu Rising · October 18, 2026 · 2 min read

April 2024 was the month in which capable AI became available in forms a business could run under its own control.

What happened

Google Cloud introduced Vertex AI Agent Builder (April 9). At its Cloud Next conference, Google presented tools for building AI agents that draw on a company's own documents and systems. It was an early sign that the large cloud providers expected businesses to build task-specific assistants rather than rely on general chat tools.

Meta released Llama 3 (April 18). The first models came in two sizes, with weights that companies could download and run on their own infrastructure, under a license that permits commercial use. For businesses with sensitive data, this meant a capable model could operate without sending information to an outside provider.

Microsoft released the Phi-3 models (April 23). These small models were designed to run on modest hardware, including laptops and other devices. Small models handle narrow, well-defined tasks at very low cost.

What it meant for business owners

• Data control became a practical option. A business that could not send customer or financial records to an outside service could now consider running a model itself, or through a provider under stricter terms.
• Not every task needs a large model. Classifying documents, extracting fields from invoices and routing enquiries are well suited to small, inexpensive models.
• Assistants built on company data moved closer. The value of a business's own documents and records as a source for AI increased.

One action for owners

Sort your business information into three groups: information that may be used with any reputable AI service, information that requires a contract with specific data terms, and information that must stay inside the business. This simple classification determines which tools and models you can use for each task.

Previous: March 2024. Next: May 2024. For the people side of adoption, read Bringing AI onboard without losing your team.