KPMG: Inside the AI agent playbook driving enterprise margin gains

Despite a significant increase in global AI investments, with organizations planning to spend an average of $186 million in the next year, a stark gap persists between AI expenditure and measurable business value, as highlighted by KPMG's first quarterly Global AI Pulse survey. Only 11 percent of organizations have begun deploying and scaling AI agents to achieve enterprise-wide outcomes, even though 64 percent report that AI is already delivering some meaningful results; the challenge lies in translating these initial gains into substantial operational efficiencies that impact profit margins. The report emphasizes a performance divide between "AI leaders"those actively deploying and scaling AI agents