🦾How You Can Leverage:

That AI Agent your company Is using?

Yeah, probably not an actual agent. Lolz. 

Gartner just exposed the entire industry, and we gave you the #HotTakeTuesday treatment on today’s show. 

Gartner analyzed over 3,000 vendors claiming to sell AI agents and found only 130 actually had real ones. That's a 95% deception rate in a $7 billion market built on rebranded marketing automation.

So on today's show, we had to get something off our chests. 

(After being pitched by literally hundreds of AI startups trying to get on the podcast promising they had the world’s BEST AI agents.) 

Long story short: the industry is lying to us. 

Everyone’s pushing and marketing AI Agents, but they’re kinda just old tech repackaged and spit out. 

That’s why we went all in on what an actual AI agent is, why the industry is shoving fake agents down our dang throats, and how your company can tell the difference. 

Let’s dive in. 

Real agents improvise like humans do.

Your vendors probably showed you those fancy workflow diagrams with72 decision points. Pretty charts with if-then logic mapped out by their engineering team, then sprinkle some AI on top. 

That's not an agent. That's overpriced automation.

Sorry not sorry. 

True agents get a goal and figure out their own path. They don't need human-built, predetermined workflows because they adapt in real-time when requirements change. 

Project needs a spreadsheet instead of a slide deck? They pivot. Discover better data sources mid-task? They grab new tools.

Think intern with computer access. Browser, terminal, applications. Same tools you use.

Most companies selling "agents" right now are just robotics process automation with large language models integrated. 

Or no-code automation builders, powered by AI. 

The giveaway? They can't handle unexpected situations they weren't programmed for.

Try This:

Request live demos where you change the goal halfway through. Tell the vendor you need different deliverables mid-task. Real agents adapt seamlessly. Fake ones break immediately.

This single test eliminates 95% of pretenders and saves your company from wasting quarters rebuilding failed implementations.

Windsurf was the second-best AI coding platform about 9 months ago.

Google acquihired their leadership. The rest dissolved into AI startup Cognition. 

Organizations that spent seven figures moving their entire software engineering processes to Windsurf? They're scrambling to rebuild everything from scratch.

This exact scenario is accelerating across the agent startup ecosystem. There’s dozens of agent startups raising tens of millions, promising revolutionary agent technology. 

The truth? 

Most will eventually get squashed or acquihired by Big Tech. Your pivotal, day-to-day processes should stay faaaaaar away from these dime a dozen agent startups. 

The survival rule? Stick with trillion-dollar market caps plus OpenAI and Anthropic. Microsoft, Google, Meta and NVIDIA have the resources to survive the inevitable market correction.

40% of current agentic projects will be canceled by 2027, according to Gartner. Not because agents don't work. 

Because companies are gonna build on quicksand cuz they think it’s trendy or worthwhile. 

Wrong. 

Try This:

Audit your current AI vendor list today. Calculate total exposure if any vendor with less than $10 billion market cap disappears tomorrow.

 For mission-critical processes, start migration planning to Big Tech platforms now. The acquihire announcements are accelerating and rebuilding core workflows during budget season destroys quarterly performance.

Most companies are targeting general-purpose agents when their teams lack basic AI literacy.

Turrrible combo. That won’t work. 

By 2028, Gartner says agents will handle 15% of daily work decisions. That's dozens of choices per employee per day. But 85% of companies can't successfully scale agents because they skipped foundational training.

The winning move? 

Deploy narrow agents for specific high-stakes processes first. 

As bullish as we are on ChatGPT’s new Agent Mode, it’s not gonna do much for your company today. (In the future, though, OpenAI and Google’s agent tech will drive the industry.) 

Now? 

Anthropic's coding agents (and sub-agents) deliver measurable value RIGHT now. Financial reconciliation agents for monthly close. Customer support agents for specific product lines.

These targeted applications build internal confidence and reveal integration challenges without risking core operations. Teams learn agent collaboration on contained projects before expanding scope.

Meanwhile, competitors waste quarters trying to deploy general agents across entire organizations. Their teams don't understand the technology. Their processes aren't ready. Their investments fail.

Try This:

Pick your most repetitive, high-judgment process this week. 

Deploy a narrow agent there within thirty days. Measure time saved and error reduction specifically. Use concrete wins to build internal buy-in before expanding scope. 

Companies mastering narrow agent deployment now will dominate when general agents become truly capable next year.