AI cost challenges mount as agent use gets more complex: KPMG

Dive Brief:

Deployments of coordinated artificial intelligence agents are growing, a shift that raises new cost visibility challenges for organizations, according to KPMG’s latest AI Quarterly Pulse Survey.
The share of organizations orchestrating multiple AI agents across workflows doubled to 18% from 9% in the previous survey period, according to the findings released Wednesday. Respondents reported using agents to align shared goals and success metrics across functions (64%), support joint decision-making (49%), and automate cross-functional workflows (48%).
“AI agents are changing both the operating model and the economics,” Rahsaan Shears, AI enterprise transformation leader at KPMG, said in a press release. “As organizations shift from isolated deployments to coordinated, enterprise-wide use, good governance is what ties scale, performance and value together.”

Dive Insight:

The findings reflect a broader shift in enterprise AI adoption from experimentation to a more mature phase where agents “help unify execution and drive consistency,” according to the report.

While the share of organizations deploying AI agents remained largely steady from the prior survey period (53% compared to 55%), companies are increasingly managing more complex deployments that span teams, systems and decision points, KPMG found.

That shift is creating new challenges around governance, value measurement and cost visibility.

Although many organizations have implemented governance tools such as dashboards and approval processes, most still lack real-time, end-to-end visibility into AI-related costs, KPMG found.

Only 26% of organizations have real-time visibility into the cost of running AI at scale, while 35% of leaders say AI cost management and economic literacy — including understanding usage-based pricing models such as token and inference costs — remain barriers.

The readiness gap is becoming more of an urgent issue as organizations shift from isolated AI use cases to coordinated, enterprise-wide agent deployments, according to KPMG.

“Organizations are confronting an emerging challenge: understanding and managing the cost of operating AI at scale,” the report said.

The survey captured perspectives between April 28 and May 25 from 204 U.S.-based business leaders at organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.