Dive Brief:

• Nearly three-quarters of North American enterprises expect to operate “semi- or fully-autonomous” information technology systems by 2030, up from 45% of organizations that do so today, technology firm Digitate said in a report released Monday.
• The research shows that enterprise AI adoption has reached a “pivotal moment,” according to Digitate, a Santa Clara, California-based developer of AI tools. The rapid rise of AI agents is hastening the arrival of autonomous IT, where systems collaborate with human teams by anticipating needs and supporting or executing actions, the report said.
• “AI maturity is accelerating the shift to the autonomous enterprise,” Avi Bhagtani, Digitate’s chief marketing officer, said in a press release. “Organizations have moved from experimenting with automation to scaling AI for meaningful and sustained impact.”

Dive Insight:

The report aligns with an August study from Salesforce in which CFOs signaled a shift in their AI spending and strategies amid the rise of agents. On average, finance chiefs polled by Salesforce reported allocating 25% of their total AI budgets for agents, which were widely expected by respondents to both reduce costs and boost revenue.

Agentic AI could generate up to $450 billion in economic value through revenue uplift and cost savings globally by 2028, Paris-based technology consulting firm Capgemini said in a July report.

Yet, the path to widespread adoption of AI agents is not expected to be easy. Capgemini also reported that confidence in fully autonomous AI agents had plummeted in the past year amid privacy and ethical concerns. In a survey of 1,500 senior executives across 14 countries, only 27% of respondents expressed trust in fully autonomous agents, down from 43% a year earlier.

Meanwhile, Gartner predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled by the end of 2027, due to escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls.

While enthusiasm for autonomous operations is high, readiness is uneven, according to Digitate’s research.

“The road to the autonomous enterprise will require continued investment in trust, transparency, and talent,” Digitate said in its report. “Governance frameworks must evolve from policy to practice, ensuring that every AI-driven decision is explainable and aligned to enterprise ethics.”

The study drew on responses from 600 IT decision-makers across the U.S. and Canada, Digitate said.