Artificial intelligence is entering a new era, with generative AI giving way to agentic AI-systems that act independently and perform complex tasks. Several technology executives point to this transition as the next big shift. NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang has called this the “age of AI agents,” a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity that will transform how we work, live and interact with technology.
A lot of people have been talking about AI agents for quite a while already, but mostly as a vision of the future. In the past two-three months, however, technology company after technology company has launched or upgraded their platforms for agentic AI. And we are rapidly moving from a “Human-to-Agent” phase, which we are in now, and forward towards a future driven by the interaction agents in between.
In this article, we take a closer look at what agentic AI is, how the big tech giants are positioning themselves, current applications and the value potential of what is also referred to as a new industrial revolution.
This is the first of several articles where we take a closer look at how AI agents are an emerging technology that will also influence and interact with other technologies, such as SaaS and cloud services, no-code solutions, APIs, blockchains, crypto, financial technology, social media, gaming and the metaverse.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been the clearest voice in defining the new era. At CES 2025 this week, he described agentic AI as “a new digital workforce,” with the potential to manage workflows, solve problems and offer real-time support across industries such as healthcare, software development and services, among others. Huang predicted that in the future, IT departments will act as HR departments for AI agents and become an integral part of companies' operations. Jensen predicted that this development is going to propel a multi-trillion-dollar industry.
‘We are witnessing an industrial revolution in real time, but you may not know it yet', Huang said where he stressed the transformative potential of agentic AI in businesses.
Agenic AI refers to artificial intelligence that can perform tasks autonomously to achieve defined goals. According to a recent white paper from Google, AI agents are autonomous systems designed to observe their environment, use remote tools and act on targets without human intervention. These agents combine advanced machine learning with the ability to retrieve and analyze data from various sources. They can act based on past experiences, learn from new situations and continually improve themselves. This enables them to perform complex tasks that traditional AI cannot handle.
Google's document describes how AI agents can extend the capabilities of language models by using tools to access real-time information, suggest real-world actions, and plan and execute complex tasks independently. This represents a significant step forward in how organizations can automate tasks, solve problems and make decisions that were previously handled by humans.
‘Software is eating the world’ is a well-known quote from Marc Andreassen, a term that he also explained in a article in 2011. Since then, we've seen tremendous growth in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and cloud services.
Now one might also ask the question ‘Are AI agents eating the software world’?
One of those who predict this is Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, among others in this podcast from Y Combinator:
Jared Spataro highlights the enormous potential of vertical AI agents, predicting that their market size will be ten times larger than traditional SaaS. He believes this new market could give rise to companies valued at over $300 billion. Drawing parallels to the success within the SaaS industry, he argues that vertical AI agents will not only provide software solutions, but also automate operational processes, which will significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has taken it even further, where he in this video interview predicts that the providers of SaaS software for the enterprise market will have to adapt in relation to agentic AI, or risk becoming irrelevant.
Nadella believes that SaaS applications are essentially CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) databases with business logic layered on top. This logic or ‘rules’ he believes will be taken over by AI agents. He argues that AI will be used to manage rules across multiple applications or databases rather than having them hard-coded into each individual application.
Nadella expects this will lead to a breakdown of traditional back-end systems, where AI agents will handle operations across different databases:
'The AI agents are going to update multiple databases at once and all logic will be in the AI layer', Nadella explained.
Microsoft is therefore now opting for an ‘aggressive’ strategy to “collapse” its back-end systems through the Dynamics platform, thus making SaaS applications less important.
In a world where trends can quickly be overestimated in the short term but underestimated in the longer term, it might be worth asking: Where do we stand now when it comes to agentic AI?
In his keynote at the CES consumer conference in Las Vegas, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang shared this illustration, among other things:
Huang's point is that agentic AI, which is the age we are already in, is an extension of generative AI, which first became widely known via the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Huang argues that generative AI has so far been primarily used in digital marketing to create content. Agenic AI, by comparison, will open up new applications in areas such as assisted coding, customer service and patient care. Around the corner or already in an early-stage development we find physical AI, including areas such as self-driving cars and general robotics.
How far has such agentic AI come? Several, including Jason Spataro in the aforementioned video interview, believe that agentic AI will evolve through three phases:
Human-to-agent is the current phase, where AI agents are in the process of being adopted. But already now we are seeing the emergence of autonomous AI agents who are also beginning to take their own initiatives. Where growth is predicted to become explosive is where the agents also interact with each other. Just a few weeks ago it was assumed that this would be a future scenario, but on X/Twitter, for example, there are now many examples where agents invite each other to communicate or solve tasks.
The transition from generative to agentic AI is a broad phenomenon, driven by most major IT players. We list some examples, a list that will be updated in due course:
In the workplace, AI agents can contribute both to the automation of routine tasks, the improvement of productivity through data analysis, and collaboration between people and agents.
In his keynote at CEO in Las Vegas, Jensen Huang predicted that the first wave of ‘employed’' AI agents will occupy the labor market in 2025, with digital workers capable of understanding tasks, planning and acting. These are some of the examples that Huang pulled out in relation to what an AI job agent can do:
Also, CEO Sam Altmann of OpenAI predicts that companies will recruit their first AI employees during 2025. A prediction that, in fact, has already been bypassed by reality, where several accounts on X/ Twitter have periodically - and mostly as a test - entrusted the management of their X accounts to an AI agent.
Beyond the workplace, agentic AI has the potential to impact many vertical sectors, such as:
The transition from generative to agentic AI marks a paradigm shift in how we interact with technology. While Jensen Huang has been the most prominent voice in describing this shift, efforts by Google, OpenAI, Salesforce, Microsoft and Meta show that this is a broad movement. Agenic AI promises not only increased efficiency and innovation, but also a fundamental change in how we live, work, play and shop - from the workplace to social media, gaming and other consumer-oriented experiences.
This article has been researched and prepared in several ways: using the author's knowledge, overview and narrative ability, via good old-fashioned search, using an analytic-based human-to-agent dialogue and through a personal quality assurance of content and sources.
Artificial intelligence is entering a new era, with generative AI giving way to agentic AI-systems that act independently and perform complex tasks. Several technology executives point to this transition as the next big shift. NVIDIA chief Jensen Huang has called this the “age of AI agents,” a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity that will transform how we work, live and interact with technology.
A lot of people have been talking about AI agents for quite a while already, but mostly as a vision of the future. In the past two-three months, however, technology company after technology company has launched or upgraded their platforms for agentic AI. And we are rapidly moving from a “Human-to-Agent” phase, which we are in now, and forward towards a future driven by the interaction agents in between.
In this article, we take a closer look at what agentic AI is, how the big tech giants are positioning themselves, current applications and the value potential of what is also referred to as a new industrial revolution.
This is the first of several articles where we take a closer look at how AI agents are an emerging technology that will also influence and interact with other technologies, such as SaaS and cloud services, no-code solutions, APIs, blockchains, crypto, financial technology, social media, gaming and the metaverse.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been the clearest voice in defining the new era. At CES 2025 this week, he described agentic AI as “a new digital workforce,” with the potential to manage workflows, solve problems and offer real-time support across industries such as healthcare, software development and services, among others. Huang predicted that in the future, IT departments will act as HR departments for AI agents and become an integral part of companies' operations. Jensen predicted that this development is going to propel a multi-trillion-dollar industry.
‘We are witnessing an industrial revolution in real time, but you may not know it yet', Huang said where he stressed the transformative potential of agentic AI in businesses.
Agenic AI refers to artificial intelligence that can perform tasks autonomously to achieve defined goals. According to a recent white paper from Google, AI agents are autonomous systems designed to observe their environment, use remote tools and act on targets without human intervention. These agents combine advanced machine learning with the ability to retrieve and analyze data from various sources. They can act based on past experiences, learn from new situations and continually improve themselves. This enables them to perform complex tasks that traditional AI cannot handle.
Google's document describes how AI agents can extend the capabilities of language models by using tools to access real-time information, suggest real-world actions, and plan and execute complex tasks independently. This represents a significant step forward in how organizations can automate tasks, solve problems and make decisions that were previously handled by humans.
‘Software is eating the world’ is a well-known quote from Marc Andreassen, a term that he also explained in a article in 2011. Since then, we've seen tremendous growth in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions and cloud services.
Now one might also ask the question ‘Are AI agents eating the software world’?
One of those who predict this is Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft, among others in this podcast from Y Combinator:
Jared Spataro highlights the enormous potential of vertical AI agents, predicting that their market size will be ten times larger than traditional SaaS. He believes this new market could give rise to companies valued at over $300 billion. Drawing parallels to the success within the SaaS industry, he argues that vertical AI agents will not only provide software solutions, but also automate operational processes, which will significantly improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella has taken it even further, where he in this video interview predicts that the providers of SaaS software for the enterprise market will have to adapt in relation to agentic AI, or risk becoming irrelevant.
Nadella believes that SaaS applications are essentially CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) databases with business logic layered on top. This logic or ‘rules’ he believes will be taken over by AI agents. He argues that AI will be used to manage rules across multiple applications or databases rather than having them hard-coded into each individual application.
Nadella expects this will lead to a breakdown of traditional back-end systems, where AI agents will handle operations across different databases:
'The AI agents are going to update multiple databases at once and all logic will be in the AI layer', Nadella explained.
Microsoft is therefore now opting for an ‘aggressive’ strategy to “collapse” its back-end systems through the Dynamics platform, thus making SaaS applications less important.
In a world where trends can quickly be overestimated in the short term but underestimated in the longer term, it might be worth asking: Where do we stand now when it comes to agentic AI?
In his keynote at the CES consumer conference in Las Vegas, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang shared this illustration, among other things:
Huang's point is that agentic AI, which is the age we are already in, is an extension of generative AI, which first became widely known via the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022. Huang argues that generative AI has so far been primarily used in digital marketing to create content. Agenic AI, by comparison, will open up new applications in areas such as assisted coding, customer service and patient care. Around the corner or already in an early-stage development we find physical AI, including areas such as self-driving cars and general robotics.
How far has such agentic AI come? Several, including Jason Spataro in the aforementioned video interview, believe that agentic AI will evolve through three phases:
Human-to-agent is the current phase, where AI agents are in the process of being adopted. But already now we are seeing the emergence of autonomous AI agents who are also beginning to take their own initiatives. Where growth is predicted to become explosive is where the agents also interact with each other. Just a few weeks ago it was assumed that this would be a future scenario, but on X/Twitter, for example, there are now many examples where agents invite each other to communicate or solve tasks.
The transition from generative to agentic AI is a broad phenomenon, driven by most major IT players. We list some examples, a list that will be updated in due course:
In the workplace, AI agents can contribute both to the automation of routine tasks, the improvement of productivity through data analysis, and collaboration between people and agents.
In his keynote at CEO in Las Vegas, Jensen Huang predicted that the first wave of ‘employed’' AI agents will occupy the labor market in 2025, with digital workers capable of understanding tasks, planning and acting. These are some of the examples that Huang pulled out in relation to what an AI job agent can do:
Also, CEO Sam Altmann of OpenAI predicts that companies will recruit their first AI employees during 2025. A prediction that, in fact, has already been bypassed by reality, where several accounts on X/ Twitter have periodically - and mostly as a test - entrusted the management of their X accounts to an AI agent.
Beyond the workplace, agentic AI has the potential to impact many vertical sectors, such as:
The transition from generative to agentic AI marks a paradigm shift in how we interact with technology. While Jensen Huang has been the most prominent voice in describing this shift, efforts by Google, OpenAI, Salesforce, Microsoft and Meta show that this is a broad movement. Agenic AI promises not only increased efficiency and innovation, but also a fundamental change in how we live, work, play and shop - from the workplace to social media, gaming and other consumer-oriented experiences.
This article has been researched and prepared in several ways: using the author's knowledge, overview and narrative ability, via good old-fashioned search, using an analytic-based human-to-agent dialogue and through a personal quality assurance of content and sources.
