The Rise of Agentic AI and the Next Great Structural Shift

It’s nearly impossible to overestimate the amount of structural change resulting from Agentic AI and autonomous systems. Across commercial, industrial, and consumer sectors, business models and customer experiences will be completely transformed in the near future. 

I don’t say that lightly. 

I’ve spent decades building and scaling technology and services businesses, and today I’m leading AI-driven transformation inside a $10B global enterprise. I’ve lived through cloud, mobile, SaaS, and digital transformation. None of those waves compares to what’s coming next. 

To me, the closest thing in human history to this new technological innovation and subsequent wave is the discovery of fire. Since that moment, nearly every element of human progress has been forever changed. Agentic AI will be no different. 

When I look at any value chain in a business, I can easily envision 80%, and in some cases even 100%, being replaced by Agentic AI and autonomous systems. I’m not just seeing this tech emerge incrementally to streamline specific workflows, but rather as a full structural rewire. 

From Assistance to Autonomy 

Most conversations about AI still frame it as a productivity tool to help us work faster and smarter. It’s not that that’s an inaccurate way of thinking, but it’s outdated.  

Agentic AI represents a shift from assistance to autonomy. These more advanced systems don’t just support human work; they reason, plan, execute, and coordinate tasks across workflows with minimal human involvement. Once AI moves from “tool” to “actor,” organizational design itself must change along with it. 

From my point of view, this is the moment where AI stops being something companies use and starts becoming something companies are built around. That change is what separates those who thrive and merely survive in the digital age.  

Where Agentic AI Is Showing Up First 

In practice, Agentic AI is getting rolled out initially in the areas of personal productivity, supporting task-oriented workloads, as well as basic operational workflows. So that includes any type of chaining together of regular tasks having to do with daily workflows, both on the administrative and operational levels.  

This early adoption feels natural for many organizations. It improves individual effectiveness without immediately challenging existing corporate structures, which makes it easier to accept and deploy across teams and departments. 

Secondly, we’re seeing Agentic AI show up in any area where there are operational step-by-step, structured workflows. It may be in the area of IT operational support, procurement intake, human resources onboarding, steps inside the quote-to-cash cycle, or somewhere similar. These processes are repeatable, rules-based, and data-rich, which are ideal conditions for autonomous execution. 

Also, software engineering itself is a leading area, which makes total sense because these are people who have the expertise to effectively leverage these environments. Engineers are often the first to recognize that once AI can write, test, deploy, and maintain code, the structure of engineering teams, and even software companies, changes dramatically. 

Opportunistic AI vs. Strategic AI 

In today’s world, what I most commonly see inside organizations is an opportunistic, use-case-driven approach to introducing Agentic AI. Teams identify specific problems, deploy agents to automate tasks, and deliver localized improvements in speed or efficiency. That work has value, but it’s largely different from what a much smaller group of companies is doing. 

This other class of companies are taking a strategic approach. They’re deliberately planning and building the organizational infrastructure required to support entirely new business operating models. Instead of asking, “Where can AI help?” they’re asking, “How should our business be redesigned if AI is native to it?” 

There’s a massive difference between the two. 

In some organizations, both approaches are happening simultaneously. That can create the illusion of progress, but the outcomes aren’t there to back it up. 

Opportunistic AI improves how work gets done within the existing structure. Strategic AI redefines what work exists at all, and how value is created. 

Confusing the two is one of the biggest risks organizations face right now. It brings leaders to believe they’re transforming, when in reality they’re only optimizing around the edges of a model that’s about to be completely rewritten anyway. 

The Leadership Misconception That Limits AI’s Impact 

The biggest misconception that leaders are making is thinking that AI is a topic for the IT people in the company or for the citizen developer wanting to build personal productivity tools. 

That assumption almost always guarantees underwhelming results and missed opportunities. 

Agentic AI isn’t a technology deployment. The businesses that view it that way are missing out on its full capabilities. Instead, it’s an operating model redesign. And operating-model redesigns can’t live at the edges of the organization. They need to take center stage and be fully embedded in the entire organization’s structure. 

Why Ownership Must Sit at the Top 

The fastest movers are going to be the companies where the strategy-driven approach towards capitalizing on the emergence of AI starts at the Board of Directors and senior management level and stays there in terms of ownership of the investment and direction. 

I’ve included the board of directors because their job is to have a CEO and a leadership team that is capable of creating the organizational infrastructure and amassing the brain power to get the job done. 

This leadership shift matters because the scale of capital being deployed is unprecedented. We are witnessing what may be the single largest reallocation of capital toward one element of corporate and societal infrastructure in history. Trillions of dollars are flowing into compute, data centers, energy, networking, and AI platforms. And this isn’t just happening in the tech industry. We’re seeing this mass investment of both time and money in AI across industries, from healthcare to finance to entertainment and beyond.  

Preparing for the Structural Reset Ahead 

Agentic AI will thin organizations, restructure them, and ultimately enable entirely new forms of enterprise. Some companies will navigate that transition intentionally. Others will be forced to react under pressure. It’s up to Boards and C-suite leadership to determine what class their organization will fall into.  

The organizations that thrive will be the ones that recognize this moment for what it is. It’s not just another technology wave, but a historic structural inflection point every business should be tapping into.  

Come back to the beginning. The discovery of fire didn’t just make humans more efficient. It reshaped civilization, completely revolutionizing life as we knew it. 

Agentic AI will do the same for businesses that get on board before the train leaves the station. 

In reality, there’s just one question left: Is your organization preparing to lead that shift, or be shifted by it?