The movement to autonomous workflows
AI agents execute workflows, interact with systems, and make probabilistic decisions without direct human intervention. This shift moves enterprise technology from deterministic automation to systems that reason and interpret intent. Rajesh James, Director of Agentic Trust at Mastercard, says companies are preparing for autonomous transactions. Dan Slagen, SVP Marketing at Zapier, describes an emerging requirement for a "shared central brain" to provide synchronized enterprise context. Most organizations still use disconnected systems and outdated documentation. This fragmentation creates operational risk when autonomous agents use inconsistent data. Gartner predicts 40% of enterprise applications will embed task-specific agents by the end of 2026. One in three companies already invests in agentic AI. Investment in agentic AI reached $2.51 billion across 65 deals in the first half of 2026. This amount is triple the comparable period in 2025. The shift to agentic workflows is clearly the most significant development in enterprise AI. In the Asia-Pacific region, higher mobile commerce adoption and faster digital payment penetration drive deployment of agentic commerce. Mastercard launched Merchant Trust Services to identify fraudulent merchants using behavioral and registry-based signals. The market for agentic AI is projected at $45 billion in 2025. PwC estimates these agents could contribute $2.6 to $4.4 trillion annually to global GDP by 2030. In the logistics sector, Amazon uses 750,000 autonomous mobile robots in fulfillment centers. These robots act as agents that navigate warehouses and deliver items to human pickers. This multi-agent orchestration coordinates movements to avoid collisions and minimize travel time. US early-stage venture deployment reached $86 billion across 4,864 deals through September 2026. AI infrastructure funding hit $9.83 billion by early July.
Amazon integrates Adept leadership
Amazon hired the co-founders of Adept to join its artificial general intelligence group led by Rohit Prasad. David Luan, Augustus Odena, Maxwell Nye, Erich Elsen, and Kelsey Szot move to Amazon to build digital agents that automate software workflows. Adept retains approximately 20 employees, including CEO Zach Brock and head of product Tim Weingarten. Amazon pays a licensing fee for Adept’s in-house models, agentic data, and web interaction software. This talent move mirrors the Microsoft acquisition of Inflection employees earlier this year. Adept raised $350 million in its Series B funding round in March 2023 and holds a valuation over $1 billion.
| Detail | Value |
|---|---|
| Adept Series B Funding | $350 million |
| Adept Valuation (March 2023) | Over $1 billion |
| Adept Remaining Employees | 20 |
| Agentic AI H1 2026 Funding | $2.51 billion |
Amazon’s hiring of high-ranking executives and the licensing of technology mirrors the move Microsoft made earlier this year when it hired many Inflection employees and paid a reported $650 million to license their models. Adept, which was founded in 2017 in San Francisco, focuses on developing AI agents using custom infrastructure and web interaction software. Amazon uses this technology to accelerate a roadmap for building digital agents. Amazon’s AI portfolio includes the Q assistant, the Amazon Bedrock model library, and the SageMaker platform. Amazon also owns a minority stake in Anthropic and has Andrew Ng on its board of directors. The Adept leaders report to Rohit Prasad, who previously led Alexa. Adept discussed partnerships with Meta before deciding to work with Amazon. This movement has attracted regulatory scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission, which is examining whether such deals skirt merger disclosure requirements.
Governance and human oversight
Enterprises require human oversight to manage escalation, governance, and customer trust. Wayfair uses AI agents to handle low-value customer interactions and escalate sensitive situations to humans. Abjith Mandys, Director of Machine Learning for Customer Experience at Wayfair, uses agents to monitor conversations and provide real-time guidance to support representatives. Deloitte’s 2026 Tech Trends report identifies governance and trust as the primary barriers to scaling agentic AI. You already know that models alone do not fix the risks of outdated documentation. Organizations must manage permissions, observability, API integration, and context management to avoid organizational chaos. Successful implementation requires a four-stage strategy: strategic assessment, proof of concept, platform selection, and governance. Companies target a 60% to 80% reduction in process completion time and error rates below 2% for critical processes. Finance use cases include intelligent invoice processing, fraud detection, automated compliance monitoring, and reporting. In IT, agents handle incident response and security orchestration. Logistics firms use agents for demand forecasting and inventory optimization. Managers should prioritize workflows that involve multiple handoffs or involve unstructured data like emails and documents. Effective change management includes executive sponsorship and training programs. Customer service agents can handle omnichannel support, lead qualification, and contract management. In the supply chain, agents can manage vendor performance and perform demand forecasting. Can companies establish trust between autonomous systems that operate at machine speed? Implementation requires managers to prioritize workflows that involve multiple handoffs or involve unstructured data like emails and documents.
