Is the agentic AI boom a bubble?
Spicy take versus the long view on whether agents are hype or here to stay.
One view
Yes — we're aboard the hype train.
Kelly Vaughn, Spot AI EP 15 · The Agent Bubble Debate | Spot AI's Kelly VaughnAgentic AI is a bubble.
The other
No — agents are going mainstream the way cloud and databases did.
Siva Surendira, Lyzr EP 21 · Why Enterprises Need a Different Approach to AI Agents | Lyzr’s Siva SurendiraAgents have become mainstream. I never thought it'll have this level of adoption.
EP 15 was published March 19, 2025; EP 21 was published April 30, 2025. Vaughn calls agentic AI a bubble and questions the hype around “agentic AI for x,” including the number of AI notetakers, while Surendira says agent adoption exceeded his expectations and had become mainstream. Widespread adoption can coexist with overhyped pitches.
Beyond the podcast
Analyst forecasts lean toward Vaughn on projects. In June 2025 Gartner predicted that over 40% of agentic AI projects would be canceled by the end of 2027 because of escalating costs, unclear business value or inadequate risk controls, called most current projects early experiments driven by hype, and estimated that only about 130 of the thousands of vendors marketing agentic AI offer real agentic capabilities. It calls the rebranding of existing assistants, robotic process automation and chatbots without substantial agentic capabilities “agent washing”. The same release predicts that by 2028, 15% of day-to-day work decisions will be made autonomously through agentic AI, up from 0% in 2024 (Gartner, June 25, 2025).
Usage data leans toward Surendira on adoption. Microsoft and LinkedIn's 2024 Work Trend Index, a survey of 31,000 people in 31 countries, found that 75% of knowledge workers were using generative AI at work and that 78% of AI users were bringing their own tools (Microsoft, AI at Work Is Here. Now Comes the Hard Part). A market can show both at once: heavy use of AI alongside a wave of agent projects and vendors that do not survive.
Is the AI agent bubble real? weighs the evidence in more depth, and why enterprise AI fails to show ROI covers why so many projects stall.
More debates
- Will AI replace software engineers? One guest says the agent now writes the code. Another says writing code was never the job.
- Where do AI agent frameworks add value? Two founders emphasize different parts of the problem: operating the agent stack and improving the context it uses. These positions can coexist.
- Do you need to fine-tune a model? Habib says Writer's models spare customers fine-tuning. Srinivasan says most open-model use cases she sees involve fine-tuning.
- Should AI companies build in the open? One guest hopes more companies take an open source route with AI. Another believes in open source but says it is hard to turn into a profitable business.