Gartner predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027

More than 40% of the agentic AI projects will be cancelled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear value for business or inadequate risk controls, according to the report Gartner, Inc.  

“Most agentic AI projects at the moment are early-stage experiments or proofs of concepts that are driven primarily by hype and they are often misapplied”, he says Anushree Verma, Senior Analyst Director 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 take strategic decisions and careful 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 have made significant investments in agentic AI, 42% have made conservative contributions, 8% have made no investments, and the remaining 31% are taking a wait-to-see approach or are unsure. 

Many suppliers are contributing to the hype by engaging in the “laving of” agents (agent washing) 'the rebranding existing products, such as AI assistants, robotic process automation (RPA) and chatbots, without substantial agentic resources, 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 ability 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.” 

Delivered value to the business 

Despite these initial challenges, the trend toward agentic AI represents a leap in AI capabilities and market opportunities agentic AI it will provide new means to improve resource efficiency, automate complex tasks, and introduce business innovations, going beyond the capabilities of bots automation with script and virtual assistants. 

Gartner predicts that at least 15% of day-to-day decisions at work will be made autonomously through agentic AI by 2028, 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 delivery or ROI. 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 get real value from agentic AI, Companies should focus on company productivity rather than just improving individual” tasks, says Verma.“They can start using AI agents when decisions are needed, for automation for routine workflows and assistants for simple recovery.It is about generating value for the business through cost, quality, speed and scale” 

Gartner customers can read more in the report Emerging Tech: Avoid Agentic AI Failure: Build Success Using Right Use Cases.