Investment and AI Agent Deployment Surge as Execution Becomes the Differentiator

NEW YORK — Capital continues to flow into AI, with organizations projecting average AI spending of $207 million over the next 12 months, nearly double figures from the same period last year, according to the KPMG US Q1 AI Quarterly Pulse. For the first time, the US insights are part of KPMG’s new Global AI Pulse research that will be released quarterly with data collected across 20 countries.

Over the past two years, organizations have moved from making the case for AI to putting it to work. What began as a push to validate and secure initial funding quickly progressed into experimentation and pilots and has since accelerated into broad deployment of AI agents across the enterprise.

AI’s potential value is no longer in question. However, realizing that value depends on how effectively and securely organizations can reengineer work at enterprise scale. With 65% citing difficulty scaling use cases (up from 33% last quarter) and 62% pointing to skills gaps (up from 25%) as the top barriers to demonstrating ROI, advantage is determined by the ability to execute – and execution runs through people, processes and operating models.

"Investment in AI is at the highest level we’ve seen yet and it continues on a sharp upward trajectory, with AI agent deployments accelerating,” said Steve Chase, Global Head of AI & Digital Innovation at KPMG. “The harder question organizations are now facing is whether they can move fast enough, sufficiently reimagine entire areas of their business, and do it all responsibly.”

AI Agent Deployment Crosses the Tipping Point, New Friction Follows

Organizations are rapidly integrating AI agents into their operations and teams, reflecting a rising trend. In 2024, AI agents were largely exploratory, with only 12% of organizations deploying AI agents and most activity concentrated in pilots. By Q2 2024, deployment tripled to 33%. Today, 54% of organizations are actively deploying AI agents.

As AI agents move deeper into day‑to‑day operations, their most immediate impact is how work gets coordinated across the enterprise. Operations (79%) and technology (78%) departments lead in agentic deployment, but agents are taking on broader responsibilities that help to break down siloes between functions; nearly three‑quarters (73%) are using AI agents to automate workflows that span multiple functions. More than half (53%) rely on them to route information and decisions between teams and provide shared knowledge bases or unified dashboards (51%).

Human-led, AI Agent-Enabled Work Becomes the Dominant Model

At the same time, expectations around agent-led work have recalibrated. More than half of leaders (57%) now expect people to manage and direct AI agents. Employee response is beginning to align, with 55% reporting some level of adoption or integration of AI agents. Resistance is driven primarily by human readiness, with skills gaps (76%) and concerns about job security (67%) emerging as the key barriers.

Leaders increasingly recognize that without rapid skill development and role evolution, even advanced AI systems will stall before they scale. The majority (87%) of leaders say upskilling and reskilling the existing workforce is their number one focus as it relates to supporting the creation of an AI-enabled workforce, ahead of hiring (68%) or job redesign (55%).

Just as important, what leaders value in talent is shifting. For entry-level roles, adaptability and continuous learning (83%) outweigh technical programming skills (67%), reinforcing a longer‑term trend toward learning velocity and judgment as differentiators.

“AI outcomes increasingly depend on workforce readiness,” said Rahsaan Shears, aIQ Program Lead at KPMG. “The limiting factor isn’t the technology, it’s whether people have the skills to direct AI, apply judgment and take responsibility for results.”

Governance becomes a prerequisite for scale

Early governance concerns around ethical frameworks, regular audits, and oversight, have increasingly become a prerequisite for scale, shaping whether organizations earn workforce trust and sustain momentum. Reflecting that shift, 91% of leaders say data security, privacy, and risk will influence their AI strategies over the next six months. AI agent deployment is also bringing questions of trust, control and accountability to the forefront – 63% percent now require human validation of AI agent outputs, up from 22% in Q1 2025, followed by a reliance on trusted technology providers to build their AI agents (47%).  

Bottom Line: Investment Sets the Pace, People & Security Decide the Outcome

AI investment is accelerating and agents have moved into production. Our data over the last two years makes the trajectory clear: workforce enablement, data quality and risk mitigation are what convert AI from potential into performance.

KPMG Global AI Pulse Survey

This quarter, KPMG International launched its first Global AI Pulse Survey, expanding the lens to capture how AI investment, AI agent deployment and execution are evolving worldwide. The global study resulted in 2,110 C-suite and business leader responses spanning 20 member countries, including 75% from companies exceeding $1 billion in annual revenue,

The global data reinforces the momentum seen in the U.S., while also highlighting important regional differences. Globally, organizations plan to spend an average of $186 million on AI over the next 12 months, compared with $207 million in the U.S. AI agent maturity patterns vary as well.

Approaches to agent integration and how they will work alongside people diverge by region. U.S. organizations are gravitating toward a human–AI collaboration model, Europe is emphasizing a human-first approach, and ASPAC is more likely to pursue agent-first operating models—underscoring how regulatory environments, workforce dynamics and other factors are shaping how AI is put to work across markets. Read more.

The KPMG Quarterly AI Pulse Survey in the U.S. captures perspectives between February 17 and March 17 from 237 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more. More than a third have revenues of $10 billion or more.