A new Gartner report claims more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027.

This will be news to clients, analysts, and many of us reporters who've had to repeatedly endure hearing the word "agentic" and/or the mantra-like "the future is agentic" thanks to certain enterprise software vendors. Case in point: HPE, which added agentic AI management capabilities to its Greenlake platform as of yesterday.

Explaining its pessimism, Gartner says escalating costs, unclear business value, or inadequate risk controls may spell the end for more than two-fifths of projects within two years.

“Most agentic AI projects right now are early-stage experiments or proof of concepts that are mostly driven by hype and are often misapplied,” Anushree Verma, senior director analyst at Gartner, explained. “This can blind organizations to the real cost and complexity of deploying AI agents at scale, stalling projects from moving into production. They need to cut through the hype to make careful, strategic decisions about where and how they apply this emerging technology.”

According to a January 2025 poll held by Gartner of 3,412 webinar attendees, 19% said their organization had made significant investments in agentic AI; 42% had made conservative investments; 8% had no investments; with the remaining 31% taking a wait-and-see approach or were unsure.

Talking to existing and potential clients at various events from the likes of Salesforce and more, this reporter believes the last two segments are probably larger than is reported across the enterprise landscape. This is as the word "agentic" doesn’t mean anything to many, especially those who are still getting used to generative AI in their tech stack: think copilots and generative AI-powered chatbots.

In fact, the Gartner report coins a handy new term - "agent washing," the rebranding of existing products, such as AI assistants, RPA, and chatbots, without substantial agentic capabilities. The research giant estimates only about 130 of the thousands of agentic AI vendors out there are real.

“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,” Verma noted. “Many use cases positioned as agentic today don’t require agentic implementations.”

But that won’t put Gartner off from flying the agentic flag. While there doesn’t seem to be a Magic Quadrant in agentic AI just yet, the research firm predicts at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI by 2028, up from none last year.

In addition, Gartner says 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, up from less than 1% in 2024.

“To get real value from agentic AI, organizations must focus on enterprise productivity, rather than just individual task augmentation,” Verma concluded in the accompanying Gartner press release. “They can start by using AI agents when decisions are needed, automation for routine workflows, and assistants for simple retrieval. It’s about driving business value through cost, quality, speed, and scale.”