Untamed launched the business after using AI agents in-house
Unleashed AI opened for client work in early August 2026 after Melbourne growth marketing agency Untamed tested AI agents inside its own business.
On 3 August 2026, Untamed said it had launched Unleashed AI as a separate company to build and run AI agents inside Australian businesses.
Untamed now delivers with 27 staff the volume of work it previously needed 49 people to produce.
Maria Kathopoulis, founder of Untamed, linked the new business to a gap between AI adoption and actual returns in Australia.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 12% of Australian businesses used AI in 2024-25, rising to 35% among large businesses.
However, KPMG found only 34.7% of Australian firms reported productivity gains from automated workflows. That was the lowest figure across six markets and below the 42.3% global average.
Kathopoulis argued the problem is implementation, not the technology itself. She said buying a licence can take an afternoon, but mapping tasks, approvals and checks can take months.
Without staff who have deployed AI agents before, many companies stall at the pilot stage. After that, teams often return to old processes while the software licence keeps billing.
“Your next hire is often an automation brief in disguise,” Kathopoulis said.
Untamed first built agents to remove repetitive work from reporting, campaign checks, research and administrative steps between a brief and the final work.
After that work was automated, demand for Untamed’s marketing services increased. Clients then asked the agency to build similar systems inside their own companies.
Unleashed AI is targeting professional services firms and mid-sized businesses with repeatable processes to automate but limited in-house capacity to manage the rollout.
Buildmetric cut reporting errors 98%
In its first client build, Untamed deployed two AI agents for Buildmetric in May 2026. Buildmetric later became a launch partner in Unleashed AI.
Those two agents recovered at least 72 hours of staff time each week and reduced reporting errors and gaps by 98%.
As a result, Buildmetric staff spent more time acting on data instead of producing it. The launch partnership includes Buildmetric, Brett Kneebone and Luke Rose.
Luke Rose, founder of Buildmetric and a launch partner in Unleashed AI, said his team had spent the front half of each week pulling reports together and correcting them before the automation build.
Following the Buildmetric project, Untamed used the results to formalise the model in a separate business. Unleashed AI then opened for client work in early August 2026.
