Yext Announces Multiplayer Agent Harness and Flame.ai Acquisition

Yext has introduced a multiplayer agent harness for marketing teams that creates a shared, context-rich workspace in Scout where corporate teams, field teams, partners, and agents work side by side toward the same goal.

"AI software companies are selling a vision where a [chief marketing officer] is better off with 10,000 agents than 10 great humans," said Michael Walrath, chairman and CEO of Yext, in a statement. "Every new technology gets sold as the advantage itself. Search, user-generated content, and social each gave early movers an edge until everyone had it, and then great marketers were the advantage again. Agents are no different because tools always commoditize and marketers never do. We built Scout's agent harness to put human judgment together with agents that carry historical context, memory, and intelligence. That's an advantage a competitor can't buy, because it runs on your people and your data."

With Scout's multiplayer agent harness, marketing teams, partners, franchisees, and local managers work from the same data and direct the same agents. Scout monitors continuously every surface where the company and its competitors show up: traditional and AI search, listings, reviews, webpages, social, and more. When something needs attention, Scout brings it to the team. The agents act on it across those same surfaces.

"Many technology companies are building agent harnesses, and they'll go multiplayer quickly. What sets Yext apart is the historical customer and competitive context," said Christian Ward, chief data officer of Yext, in a statement. "Any agent can be taught a task or given memory. What separates agents that save time from agents that deliver business outcomes is depth of knowledge about the customer. Yext has the most comprehensive dataset of local competitive intelligence in the industry, more than 20 years of search expertise, and direct distribution across the top sources AI cites."

Yext also announced its acquisition of Flamel.ai, which helps multi-location companies run localized paid campaigns across Google, Meta, and ChatGPT. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition brings paid media into the Yext platform so companies can act on Scout's competitive insights and drive more customers to their doors. Scout already measures how every brand and location shows up against local competitors across AI and traditional search. Once the acquisition closes, Yext plans to connect that data to Flamel.ai's models, which set targeting, budget, and creative for each location. Scout will show where a location is falling behind. Agents in the harness will then direct spend to those locations and check ad claims against verified Yext data. Results will feed back into Scout to sharpen the next decision.

"Every marketer knows the frustration of paying for a click they would have earned anyway," Walrath said. "Scout already sees where each location is winning and where it's losing to competitors. Bringing paid media execution into Yext lets marketers spend where it changes the outcome, not where they're already ahead."

"What excites us most about joining Yext is the depth of data they have across every location - that's exactly what our models need to make sharper decisions for brands," said Paul Ehlinger, founder and CEO of Flamel.ai, in a statement. "Combining that visibility with our execution means brands can finally invest where it actually moves the results."