Fundamental Research Labs, an 18-month-old company born out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is taking a different approach: Embedding its agentic AI capabilities into a software tool that has Excel’s exact same look, feel and interface.  According to co-founder and Chief Business Officer Nico Christie, the new product, known as Shortcut, has near-perfect feature parity with Excel.  “It was obvious to me that if you could automate the Excel work, people would care,” Christie said. “People feel emotionally tied to Excel,” he added, “it’s a cultural thing.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ai-company-capitalizing-on-our-obsession-with-excel-adf19e09?mod=tech_lead_pos5