The Analytics Times

GLOBAL RESEARCH

THE ROI OF GEN AI

AND AGENTS 2026

With agents, early adopters are building on gen AI success

Researchers at Omdia surveyed 2,050 professionals worldwide who are actually driving the strategy, rollout and optimization of AI systems. Their global research uncovered:

  • The rising ROI of gen AI — up 20% year over year
  • The key challenges that trouble even successful organizations
  • The early moves, and rising sentiment, around AI agents

GEN AI ADOPTION RISES,

AND SO DOES THE ROI

Amid all the back-and-forth about the value of generative AI, organizations report success.

  • 92% of early adopters say they’ve seen a positive return on their gen AI investments.
  • 75% of C-level respondents for nontechnical business orgs report a positive, quantified ROI.
  • 96% reported that they grapple with significant issues, led by data quality and quantity (40% of orgs), employee skills (35%) and integration with existing systems (31%).

Bottom line: Organizations tell us gen AI is working, their investments are continuing and the ROI is there.

40%

Respondents who quantified their ROI on gen AI report earning $1.49 for every $1 invested.

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    COMING UP FAST:

    ENTERPRISE AGENTS

    While agentic AI solutions are not widespread, and often are not yet very complex, our research shows that agents are already gaining traction among early gen AI adopters:

    • 32% of respondents say they have agentic solutions in production today.
    • Senior executives expect up to a 47% return on agentic investments in the next 12 months, in line with gen AI results to date.
    • 44% of organizations with multiple gen AI use cases in production are already using agentic AI.

    It is not surprising that early adopters of gen AI are taking their learnings to the agentic level. But it is significant that more tech-forward organizations may be opening up a sizable lead over competitors. Download the full report for details.

    At orgs already using AI agents, the most common uses are:

    MIXED SIGNALS ON GEN AI'S EFFECT

    ON JOBS AND PRODUCTIVITY

    An often-feared outcome of generative and agentic AI is that it will eliminate human jobs. And it has. Teams most often experiencing job loss due to gen AI in the past year were IT operations (at 40% of surveyed orgs), customer service/support (37%) and data analytics (37%). But that’s not the whole story.

    • 42% of respondents say that gen AI has only created jobs at their organization.
    • 11% responded only that jobs have been lost.
    • 35% report that jobs have both been created and lost due to AI.
    • 13% said that employment had not been affected by AI-powered automation.

    See the report for more information on how job impacts affect seniority levels and more.

    AT_SnowflakeROIofGenAI_Pic2

    Share of businesses having seen both AI-related job creation and loss that report a net positive

    BEST PRACTICES, WORST PITFALLS

    EMERGE FROM EARLY ADOPTERS

    The pivot to agentic enthusiasm does not mean that gen AI is now child’s play. While nearly every respondent reports that gen AI is returning value, 96% say that they grapple with significant issues, including:

    • Data quality and quantity (40% of respondents)
    • Employee expertise or skill (35%)
    • Integration with existing or legacy systems (31%)
    • Scalability and performance (27%)

    For midsized companies, talent is a bigger challenge: 43% cited it as a problem, compared to 34% of enterprise respondents.

    AT_SnowflakeROIofGenAI_Pic3

    The blissful share of respondents who say they’ve had no problems implementing gen AI

    Not sure where to start with Snowflake? 

    Talk to SIFT Analytics — and let us help you explore your use case and build a practical, scalable strategy that delivers real business results.

    Talk to SIFT


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