Agentic AI is coming for your database

AI agents are rapidly transforming from a theoretical concept into a practical reality, exerting significant pressure on data storage and transfer systems, as discussed in a Cockroach Labs webinar featuring Rob Reid and Spencer Kimball. These agents, unlike humans, operate continuously and unpredictably, potentially initiating thousands of requests per second, highlighting the inadequacy of current infrastructures which rely on eventual consistency. The webinar emphasized the need for databases to offer strong, serializable consistency, and elastic scalability to handle unprecedented transaction volumes without downtime, as well as cost efficiency to remain sustainable at large scales. CockroachDB was highlighted as a database well-suited for AI-driven environments due to its strong consistency, horizontal scalability, and resilience, offering a viable solution for managing the demands of agentic AI. The rapid pace of AI development necessitates that data infrastructures evolve quickly to accommodate the new era, where AI agents drive the majority of traffic, challenging traditional architectures and cost models.