With so many provisions to develop agents in-house, often using no-code or low-code tools, it’s easy to overlook the dedicated agents being built by the world’s leading AI companies. The push often seems to center on how much output a company can produce with an agentic workforce, which inevitably means a host of agentic workers.
However, much like the super app, the super agent is a goal that many organizations are trying to achieve — here’s a reminder of SAP’s efforts back in October 2024. Now, ServiceNow has made Arc, its long-running personal enterprise AI agent, generally available, along with robust governance tools.
What is Arc?
Arc is ServiceNow’s personal, long-running AI agent, which moves beyond Q&A to carry out everyday tasks on behalf of users. These tasks are performed across ServiceNow workflows, email, Teams chats, and other commonly used productivity tools. Over time, as it builds memory, Arc develops skills and delivers better performance.
In terms of features, the most impressive include its ability to take ownership of tasks and, once given an objective, actively pursue it by taking autonomous actions rather than simply following instructions. Arc proactively surfaces work from areas like meetings and email inboxes. If a required integration doesn’t exist, it can build one, provided it falls within a defined NVIDIA OpenShell boundary.
What really sets Arc apart, though, is how it’s governed and secured. Given its access to enterprise data and systems, security is particularly important. ServiceNow says its approach extends beyond application-level controls to runtime enforcement and, in collaboration with NVIDIA, hardware-level enforcement too.
The ServiceNow Super Intelligence Control Tower defines the policies governing Arc’s actions, while NVIDIA OpenShell enforces restrictions at runtime.
AI Passport
In another development, ServiceNow has announced a further security measure that builds on the existing defenses developed alongside NVIDIA. AI Passport, which is expected to be integrated with NVIDIA’s enforcement layers in a future release, is an official record that the Super Intelligence Control Tower is designed to issue to every AI agent, MCP server, and other AI asset it governs.
The Super Intelligence Control Tower draws on business context from the ServiceNow AI Platform, including decision logic and vendor risk, to determine which tools and actions each AI agent is authorized to use. In practice, ServiceNow issues the AI Passport, with the relevant business context and authorized usage rules, while NVIDIA’s software and hardware enforcement layers are designed to read and enforce these permissions.
“ServiceNow and NVIDIA have been building toward the same vision for years. As AI agents take on more autonomous tasks, governance and security have to extend to everything they touch,” said Jon Sigler executive vice president and general manager, AI Platform at ServiceNow.
“Arc is the first personal AI agent built for everyday work and governable by IT through the Super Intelligence Control Tower and NVIDIA OpenShell. NVIDIA software and hardware will also read AI Passport, so different technology layers know what an AI agent should be allowed to do. This helps give enterprises the trust needed to scale autonomous AI with confidence.”
With Arc, ServiceNow aims to make autonomous AI more secure, accountable, and manageable in enterprise environments.
