Agent Economy: Scaling Faster Than Cost Governance

The "agent economy" is scaling faster than it can be metered, creating a gap in cost governance for businesses. New data shows that 95% of enterprises worldwide now use at least one company-funded agent-enabled workflow in production. The average organization runs about 11 of these workflows. Enterprises with visibility into their agent costs report an average monthly spend of over $117,000 on agent inference and related services. This totals well over $1 million annually. The number of active agents is projected to reach 2.5 billion by 2030, nearly 80 times the 2025 figure. These agents will complete 459 trillion actions a year, up from 48 billion today. However, 67% of enterprises ran over their agent spend budget by more than 10% in the past year. This includes 24% that were significantly or extremely over forecast. This issue highlights a visibility problem, not a discipline problem. Businesses need to ensure their metering and governance tools keep pace with this rapid expansion to avoid negative outcomes.