Counterintuitive Phenomenon: The Smartest AIs Are Working for Collaboration Platforms
Over the past six months, API call volumes from leading large model companies have surged by 220%. Yet beneath this boom lies a counterintuitive truth: those once-unassailable large model companies are, to some extent, working for collaboration software.
Two years ago, investors widely misjudged that AI-powered office tools would completely disrupt traditional collaboration platforms. Reality has delivered an entirely opposite script.
Today, numerous third-party AI assistants and intelligent work agents are going to great lengths to integrate with the Lark ecosystem. The smartest AIs ultimately choose to “do manual labor” inside collaboration platforms.
The reason is straightforward: consumer-facing competition centers on access points; industry-facing competition hinges on real-world implementation.
An AI generating a polished piece of copy or strategy is merely the beginning. To complete a genuine business loop, the process must unfold within a collaboration system. Lark natively offers everyday capabilities—real-time messaging, multi-dimensional tables, documents, calendars, video conferencing, and approval workflows. When employees drop outputs generated by third-party AI office tools into Lark group chats, consolidate them as team assets in Lark Docs, or even trigger a Lark approval workflow with a single click, that’s when AI truly gains hands and feet.
Without integration into business systems, even the smartest AI remains a castle in the air.
Scenario Breakdown: AI Without Business Systems Is Just a Castle in the Air
A large model can instantly generate a flawless marketing plan—but then what? Most likely, it’ll just sit idle in a chat window, gathering digital dust.
Simple Q&A interactions cannot drive enterprise-level business workflows. No matter how high its IQ, a large model cannot magically intuit a company’s intricate supply rules or approval logic.
Consider how third-party AI assistants integrated into the Lark ecosystem actually get work done.
Strategies assisted by AI require human intervention via Lark’s real-time messaging to precisely reach relevant teams; discussion and consensus-building happen inside Lark Docs; tasks are broken down and progress tracked using multi-dimensional tables; calendars synchronize stakeholders’ availability for video meetings; and final execution occurs through compliant approval workflows.
The division of labor is clear: AI handles the “thinking”; Lark handles the “doing.”
Lark’s suite of foundational capabilities—real-time messaging, multi-dimensional tables, Docs, Calendar, video conferencing, and approvals—effectively functions as AI’s physical extension for real-world deployment. Without this tightly woven business infrastructure as its foundation, even the most impressive intelligent work agent is little more than a keyboard warrior who excels only at theoretical discourse.
Underlying Logic: Data and Processes Are the Industry’s Moat
Why are large model companies lining up to integrate with Lark? Because they’re anxious.
Competition for consumer-facing access points has nearly plateaued, while entry into the deep waters of the industrial sector remains stubbornly elusive. Large models possess astonishing general intelligence but suffer from a severe lack of domain-specific business knowledge. In industrial internet contexts, whoever controls authentic data, rules, and processes holds the irreplaceable trump card.
At its core, Lark functions as an enterprise’s business operating system. It houses the most vivid organizational context: who owns which project, where exactly an approval process stalls, and what hidden supply-chain rules lie buried in multi-dimensional tables. This earthy, proprietary data—the kind soaked in real-world operational grit—is precisely the most effective nourishment for training AI.
Without Lark’s data feeding and process constraints, third-party intelligent work agents are merely loosely assembled components lacking roots—fundamentally unable to approach the threshold of core business operations.
No matter how dazzling its technological halo, commercial fundamentals remain unchanged. Large models deliver general-purpose computing power; Lark hosts concrete business execution. When the AI tide recedes, the true winners will always be collaboration platforms that firmly grip both data and processes.
Value Reassessment: Collaboration Platforms Reach a Defining Inflection Point in the AI Era
Many previously worried that large models would inevitably swallow up collaboration software. Such concerns were clearly unfounded.
The more vibrant the AI office tool ecosystem becomes, the more prominently Lark’s role as the enterprise’s central nervous system shines through. Those intelligent third-party work agents ultimately must connect to Lark’s real-time messaging, Docs, Calendar, and multi-dimensional tables to convert capability into tangible results.
AI won’t replace Lark—it will instead ignite far greater vitality in platforms deeply rooted in real business operations. Large model companies break through the ceiling of technological possibility; Lark secures the floor of practical implementation.
The true winners of the AI era will never be model vendors peddling parameters alone, but ecosystem platforms capable of seamlessly weaving AI capabilities into daily workflows.
When the smartest AIs willingly take jobs serving business systems, Lark has already quietly completed its value leap—from a collaboration tool to an industrial AI operating system. That is the irreversible endgame.