Agentic AI: The New Vendor Lock-in Risk for Businesses

IT providers are encouraging businesses to quickly adopt agentic AI, promoting it as a transformative technology. This new proposition suggests systems that can reason, plan, and act autonomously, fundamentally changing how organizations operate. Analyst Gartner predicts that 40% of enterprise applications will use task-specific AI agents by the end of 2026. However, Gartner also estimates that over 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027 due to rising costs, unclear business value, or insufficient risk controls. The bottom line is that businesses face potential "lock-in" with agentic AI, similar to past enterprise technology adoptions, which could lead to escalating costs and dependency on IT suppliers.