If 2025 was hailed as the year of the agent, then 2027 could see many of them destined for the scrapyard.
According to Gartner, more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be shelved within the next two years.
The research firm says early enthusiasm is giving way to reality as organisations face soaring costs, ambiguous value, and patchy risk controls.
A good slug of projects to date have been hype-driven pilots or proof-of-concept experiments that lack a clear route to production.
“Most agentic AI propositions lack significant value or return on investment (ROI), as current models don’t have the maturity and agency to autonomously achieve complex business goals or follow nuanced instructions over time,” said Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at Gartner.
A January 2025 Gartner survey found that 19% of companies had made significant investments in agentic AI, while 42% took a more cautious approach.
Yet confusion remains over what qualifies as a true AI agent. Gartner estimates only around 130 vendors offer credible agentic capabilities, with many others engaging in “agent washing”, rebranding older tools without upgrading functionality.
The firm advises focusing on agents that improve enterprise-level productivity and solve clearly defined problems.
Integration can be costly and disruptive, and in some cases may require rebuilding workflows from scratch.
Still, Gartner forecasts that by 2028, 15% of daily workplace decisions will be made by agentic AI, with such capabilities embedded in a third of enterprise applications.
As Verma put it: “To get real value from agentic AI, organisations must focus on enterprise productivity, rather than just individual task augmentation.”