London, UK – Humaans, the company behind one of the most loved and design-forward HR systems on the market, announced today the launch of Athena, a new AI platform built to transform how HR functions and organizations operate.
Athena introduces a new category of enterprise software: Agentic AI for HR and Operations – a foundational step toward fully AI-native organizations.
For the past two decades, enterprise software has been static. Systems dictated rigid processes, and companies reshaped themselves to fit the vendor’s mould; but the world has changed. In just five years, organizations have had to reinvent themselves for remote work, hyper-growth, layoffs, efficiency mandates, and now, AI-driven automation. The rate of change has outpaced the rigidity of legacy systems.
Athena represents the new cycle of enterprise software – one that is fluid, adaptive, and orchestrated through intelligent agents that assist employees at scale and act on data, not just storing it. Built on Humaans’ best-in-class HR foundation and designed to work seamlessly with any HRIS and other systems, Athena turns data into action. It uses agentic AI to autonomously run routine processes, handle repetitive tasks, surface actionable insights, and amplify the impact of every HR, Finance, Ops, and IT team.
“We’re entering a new product era,” said Giovanni Luperti, CEO and Co-Founder of Humaans. “The last generation of SaaS software was prescriptive – it told you how to work. The next generation will be open-ended and adaptive, built around how your organization actually operates. Humaans Athena is designed for AI-native enterprises that need flexibility, speed, and intelligence in every process.”
With Athena, Humaans is giving companies a scalable extension of their workforce; a layer of intelligent automation that saves thousands of hours and operates at a fraction of the human cost. By eradicating manual work, Athena helps organizations meet today’s efficiency mandates and reallocate time toward strategy, creativity, and growth, the true drivers of performance in the AI era.
The New AI Infrastructure for the progressive companies
At its core, Humaans now combines two foundational layers for the AI-native enterprise:
- The Data Layer: a dynamic system of record and intelligence, capturing and consolidating people information across HR, Finance, IT, and Operations.
- The Orchestration Layer: an agentic AI layer that automates, coordinates, and scales workflows across the workforce by answering, assigning and acting on employees’ behalf.
This dual architecture allows Humaans to act as both the brain and the nervous system of today’s organizations, enabling seamless automation across onboarding, performance management, approvals, contract management, compliance, and more.
From Static Workflows to Intelligent Routing & Case Resolution
Early use cases demonstrate how Athena reshapes day-to-day operations:
- Intelligent Onboarding: Athena autonomously creates and sequences onboarding workflows, loops in managers, and schedules the right events, adapting to each team’s structure, location, and needs.
- Data Intelligence: By connecting different systems, Athena can surface trends, identify risk areas, and collect additional intel to help take actions.
- Workflow Automation: HR and Ops teams can describe what they need in natural language: “Set up an offboarding workflow for departing engineers in EMEA”. Athena builds and deploys the process instantly.
- Helpdesk Agent: Athena acts as a conversational teammate that answers people-related questions, triggers workflows, and provides context in real time. Always on and available 24/7, it resolves up to 70% of queries autonomously and helps teams handle the rest faster and more efficiently.
“HR, Finance, Ops, and IT are full of inefficiencies,” said Luperti. “AI agents can unlock massive productivity and fundamentally reshape how these teams operate. Athena starts by capturing ownership of workflows legacy systems can’t support, and progressively transforms how the enterprise functions.”
A New Category: Agentic AI for HR
Athena marks the beginning of a new software category; one that bridges the gap between traditional systems of record and the new wave of agentic automation. Unlike legacy HR platforms, Athena doesn’t store data, it acts on it. It understands context, adapts to change, and orchestrates work across systems. All driven by a natural language user experience.
“Incumbents can’t adapt to this new cycle,” added Luperti. “Their architectures are old, their release cycles slow, and they weren’t built for a world that reorganizes itself every six months. Athena is designed for the organizations building the future, the ones who see AI as an extension of their workforce, not a bolt-on.”
Availability
Athena is currently available in private access with select Enterprise customers. Humaans plans to expand access this Fall as part of its broader vision to build the AI-native workplace stack, redefining how companies manage, automate, and scale their people operations in the age of intelligent software.
About Humaans Humaans is building the next generation of HR infrastructure: flexible, powerful, data-driven, and beautifully designed. Trusted by some of the world’s most forward-thinking Mid-Market companies, including Lovable, Poolside, and Quantexa, Humaans helps organizations automate processes, connect systems, and drive performance. Headquartered in London, Humaans is backed by leading investors including Y Combinator, Lachy Groom, Moonfire, Frontline, and Exor, and is now pioneering the future of agentic AI for Enterprises with Athena.
Business: Humaans
Contact Name: Marco Gurnari
Contact Email: marco@humaans.io
Website URL: https://humaans.io/
Country: United Kingdom
