Agentic AI is everywhere right now—Salesforce, Microsoft, AWS and the rest have all rolled out dedicated agent services that let enterprises hand off tasks to automated “agents” instead of just getting help from a copilot. The hype is real; investment has jumped dramatically over the past year, with companies pouring more cash into building these autonomous tools.
But the market’s getting crowded fast. Gartner’s latest research warns that the sheer number of agentic solutions far outpaces actual demand, creating a “mass proliferation” that could soon trigger a market correction and a wave of consolidation. In other words, the industry is awash with options, and many of them are essentially repackaged chatbots or RPA tools—what Gartner calls “agent washing.”
Only about 130 genuine agentic AI products exist amid thousands of vendor claims, and the Bank of England has even flagged the risk of an “AI bubble” as enthusiasm wanes and the surplus of offerings grows. Larger tech firms are already snapping up smaller AI startups to beef up their portfolios, signaling the start of that consolidation phase.
So while agentic AI promises huge efficiency gains, the current landscape is a mix of real innovation and hype‑driven fluff, and the next few years will likely sort the winners from the losers as the market settles.
