McKinsey: agentic AI adoption soars, but ROI stalls

By McKinsey & Company (Dan Tinkoff and Lieven Van der Veken, global leaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey).

The email presents the latest findings from McKinsey's "state of AI research" on enterprise adoption of artificial intelligence. According to the data cited, companies are integrating AI ever more deeply into their business functions, but McKinsey poses the central question of the mailing: is that investment actually translating into financial results?

The specific figures provided in the email are as follows: 40 percent of large companies are already scaling autonomous agents, up from 27 percent the previous year. In addition, about a third of these organizations are building software in-house using agentic coding tools. However, despite this growth in adoption, enterprise-level EBIT impact has remained flat at 37 percent.

The email, signed by Dan Tinkoff and Lieven Van der Veken along with Michael Chui and Tara Balakrishnan as the research authors, frames the key question as what organizations that do capture significant value from AI are doing differently, inviting readers to explore the full report under the title "Turn AI adoption into enterprise value".

Alongside the main article, the email links to several related pieces in the McKinsey newsletter: "Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI", which looks at how AI is expanding the productivity frontier and the need to rethink how people work alongside intelligent machines; "AI-powered software development: How technology is rewriting the rules", in which three McKinsey experts explain how AI is changing software creation, from individual productivity hacks to the complete reinvention of workflows and roles; "The cost of intelligence: How CIOs can manage AI demand at scale", on how CIOs should manage enterprise-scale AI demand amid rising costs, optimizing for outcomes rather than just cost; and "From adoption to impact: Three horizons of AI transformation", based on a global survey describing how organizations can progress from individual adoption to capturing value across the entire enterprise.

Overall, the email's editorial message is that, although adoption of autonomous agents and agentic coding tools is growing strongly, most companies have yet to turn that use into measurable, sustained bottom-line impact, and McKinsey positions its research as a guide to closing that gap between adoption and value.