Veeva Systems just released its first AI agents, bringing automated capabilities to its Vault CRM and PromoMats. The company says that the agents work inside existing applications, have direct access to data and workflows, and operate within established permissions and audit trails.
Veeva’s rollout marks a shift from discrete AI features to workflow-embedded automation, arriving as regulators in the United States and Europe formalize expectations for credible and transparent artificial intelligence in drug development.
“With industry-specific Veeva AI Agents working seamlessly in Veeva applications, the life sciences industry can increase productivity, customer centricity, and advance to new ways of working,” said Andy Han, senior vice president of Veeva AI. The company’s claims that embedding agents inside validated systems offers a compliance advantage at a moment of rising regulatory scrutiny.
Architecture Built for Embedded AI
The introduction of AI agents continues a multi-year shift toward consolidating regulated data and workflows on the Vault Platform. Veeva has emphasized this direction since the early 2010s, describing Vault as a unified foundation for structured data, content, and workflow management. Over time the company replaced earlier CRM products delivered on Salesforce infrastructure with Vault-native modules, giving Veeva direct control of the data layer and the surrounding validation environment. That control is now central to its AI strategy.
In April 2025, Veeva outlined its broader plan for integrating AI into Vault. CEO Peter Gassner said the company’s aim was to make artificial intelligence “simple, secure, and compliant for life sciences companies of all sizes.”
In October, Veeva signaled that AI agents would be released across all Vault applications, and Gassner said, “AI will fundamentally change how drugs are developed and how treatment decisions are made at the point of care.” Those remarks placed the agent rollout within a longer trajectory: Veeva intends to distribute AI across commercial, clinical, regulatory, and medical systems, each governed by the same audit and permission controls.
In Vault CRM, the Free Text Agent checks call notes for potential compliance issues, the Voice Agent enables faster data capture through speech, and the Pre-Call Agent gathers relevant context before customer engagements. In PromoMats, the Quick Check Agent scans content against editorial and compliance requirements before review, while the Content Agent provides contextual summaries to reduce manual document handling. Veeva states these agents operate “within established user access controls, permissions, and audit trails.”
Customers cited early productivity gains in the launch announcement. Bristol Myers Squibb’s chief digital and technology officer Greg Meyers said the company’s expanded Veeva partnership supports its mission to deliver innovative medicines globally. Moderna’s senior director of commercialization systems Jason Benagh described the Quick Check Agent as a step toward a more streamlined review process. Roche, Eli Lilly, and other firms referenced similar expectations for efficiency improvements.
Industry analysis highlights the architectural distinction between Veeva’s approach and horizontal providers. Analysts note that copilots from general-purpose vendors often operate outside validated systems, while Veeva’s agents function within the same compliance structure customers already use for GxP workflows.
AI Moves Into Regulated Workflows
The release comes as regulators articulate expectations for transparent and well-controlled AI in drug development.
In 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued draft guidance outlining requirements for AI credibility, data provenance, lifecycle management, and human oversight in regulatory submissions. European regulators, including the European Medicines Agency and the U.K.’s MHRA, published similar statements emphasizing transparency and risk controls. These documents do not explicitly address AI agents inside enterprise systems, but they reinforce the requirement that any AI supporting regulated activities must be traceable and auditable.
Veeva presents Vault as the compliance foundation for its AI deployment, stating that agents operate with the same governance applied to human actions, including audit trails and access restrictions. The principle is that agentic behavior remains inside the system customers already validate, a position Veeva says gives companies a defensible path for early AI adoption.
The broader rollout planned for 2026 will extend this model across safety, quality, clinical operations, regulatory, and clinical data management. Veeva’s October roadmap said the agents will use models from Anthropic and Amazon hosted on Amazon Bedrock, and customers can develop custom agents using either Veeva-hosted or customer-provided models. Each functional area introduces distinct regulatory obligations, creating a wider test of whether embedded AI can be validated at scale within GxP environments.
How these agents perform under regulatory review remains unproven. Early customer statements describe productivity improvements and streamlined review cycles, but regulators will evaluate AI behavior through documentation, traceability, and consistency of outputs. Still, Han said the agents mark the beginning of “new ways of working” in life sciences.
