More than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to rising costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls, according to Gartner, Inc.
“Most agentic AI projects at the moment are early-stage experiments or proof of concepts primarily driven by hype and are often poorly applied,” says Anushree Verma, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner. “This can blind companies to the real cost and complexity of implementing AI agents at scale, preventing projects from going into production. They need to overcome the hype to make strategic decisions and careful choices about where and how to apply this emerging technology.”
According to a survey conducted by Gartner in January 2025 with 3,412 webinar participants, 19% said their companies made significant investments in agentic AI, 42% made conservative investments, 8% made no investments, and the remaining 31% are taking a wait-and-see approach or are uncertain.
Many vendors are contributing to the hype by engaging in “agent washing” (agent washing) – the rebranding of existing products, such as AI assistants, robotic process automation (RPA), and chatbots, without substantial agentic capabilities. Gartner estimates that only about 130 of the thousands of agentic AI vendors are real.
“Most agentic AI proposals lack significant value or return on investment (ROI), as current models lack the maturity and capability to autonomously achieve complex business goals or follow differentiated instructions over time,” says Verma. “Many use cases positioned as agentic today do not require agentic implementations.”
Delivering business value
Despite these early challenges, the trend toward agentic AI represents a leap in AI capabilities and market opportunities. Agentic AI will provide new ways to enhance resource efficiency, automate complex tasks, and introduce business innovations, going beyond the capabilities of bots with script and virtual assistants.
Gartner predicts that by 2028, at least 15% of daily workplace decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, compared to 0% in 2024. Additionally, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% in 2024.
At this early stage, Gartner recommends that agentic AI be adopted only where there is clear value or ROI delivery. Integrating agents into legacy systems can be technically complex, often disrupting workflows and requiring costly modifications. In many cases, rethinking workflows with agentic AI from the ground up is the ideal path to successful implementation.
“To derive real value from agentic AI, companies should focus on enterprise productivity rather than just improving individual tasks,” says Verma. “They can start by using AI agents for decision-making, automating routine workflows, and simple recovery assistance. It’s about generating business value through cost, quality, speed, and scale.”
Gartner clients can read more in the report Emerging Tech: Avoid Agentic AI Failure: Build Success Using Right Use Cases.
