Companies are spending millions on "agentic AI" without knowing what they bought
Companies invest heavily in AI tools they don't understand, creating procurement and implementation challenges for product and legal teams managing vendor relationships and technology integration.
CNBC's Bob Violino reports that 21% of senior leaders have invested $10 million or more in AI this year, up from 16% last year, with a third planning similar spending next year. But most don't understand what they're actually buying. EY's Dan Diasio explains that vendors are rebranding basic generative AI tools as "agentic AI" to ride the hype wave. Current AI tools mostly function as assistants that respond to prompts, while true agents work autonomously with context awareness. Only 14% of organizations have fully implemented agentic AI despite the heavy spending.
This creates classic procurement dysfunction across the industry. For product and legal teams, expect vendor contracts promising capabilities that may not exist, integration challenges with mislabeled technology, and potential liability gaps when "autonomous" systems aren't actually autonomous. The rush to spend without clear definitions means teams are inheriting technical debt disguised as innovation.
Bob Violino
