Advanced chips are enabling a universe of new AI applications, and boardrooms are clamoring to implement them. “For the last five years, every major event – whether Gartner, Forrester, or FinOps – has featured AI heavily. CIOs have the opportunity to lead company-wide transformation,” says Benjamin Strehl, CEO of USU GmbH. Organizations in all sectors are most likely to use generative AI – AI that generates text, images, or ideas from data – in marketing and sales, but adoption elsewhere varies by industry. For example, it’s prevalent in service operations in media and telco, software engineering in tech, and knowledge management in professional services (McKinsey). 

Strehl points out that beneath the hype, the reality remains uneven: “Most companies have a chatbot here, an invoice scanner there – but real, scaled adoption remains rare.” Often, data organization is the first barrier. “It must be consolidated and organised properly. Fragmented or inconsistent data will not yield meaningful AI insights,” says Emil Eifrem, CEO of Neo4j, a world leader in graph database systems. But beyond data quality, EY’s APAC Managing Partner Patrick D. Winter stresses that “infrastructure and governance around AI implementation, and clear, measurable ROI targets” are critical for success. To date, EY has invested $400 million in AI upskilling, with nearly 80 percent of staff now using AI.

The latest leap is agentic AI - software systems that don’t just respond, but deduct, plan and act. The hype level for this is high: “Agentic AI is everywhere – you see it on every billboard along Highway 101 in the Bay Area,” says Vijay Guntur, CTO of HCLTech. Tanuja Randery, EMEA Managing Director for AWS, calls AI agents the year’s biggest trend and says they can “completely reimagine complex processes”. Project management platform Teamwork.com is launching a “gallery of AI agents”, like virtual executive assistants or traffic managers. “Customers will essentially onboard an AI agent, just like they would a new employee,” says Daniel Mackey, CEO. AlayaCare already is piloting agentic systems in home-based care: “We have introduced AI agents that manage intake, visit rescheduling, and billing autonomously. Only 50 to 60 cents of every dollar in home care reaches the frontline caregiver. With effective AI automation, we could hit 70 to 80 cents per dollar,” says Adrian Schauer, founder & CEO.