Global Business Leaders Sound Alarm on ‘Agent Governance’ as 93% of enterprises embrace agentic AI

New global research exposes rising concerns around security, interoperability, and oversight as autonomous agents flood enterprise systems

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, August 19, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- New global research from Gravitee, the leader in agentic API and event management, reveals that 93% of enterprise organizations are either already using agentic AI or plan to within the next two years. But behind the rapid adoption curve, business leaders face growing exposure to significant risks - all signs of a looming wave of 'agent sprawl,' (when autonomous AI agents are deployed faster than they can be properly governed).

According to the State of Agentic AI 2025 report - which surveyed 300 global technology leaders, developers, and AI practitioners at enterprise organizations - over 80% of respondents feel their biggest challenges with Agentic AI are integration with existing systems, data privacy and security concerns. A growing area of concern is also how agents interact with one another as adoption accelerates, known as agent-to-agent (A2A) coordination. As a result, the research found, 75% of business leaders ranked governance as their top priority when it comes to successful agentic AI implementation, with nearly half (49%) of AI agent initiatives backed by new, dedicated budgets as a result.

The surge in funding reflects the urgency to contain agent sprawl and governance concerns. In the US, agentic AI startups raised over $9.1 billion in H1 2025, a 70% year-over-year increase, making it one of the fastest-growing segments in the enterprise AI market. But as agent-based cyberattacks become more sophisticated, many enterprises still lack clear strategies for managing and governing autonomous agents at scale.
Gravitee’s research found that top motivations for agentic AI adoption among IT decision makers currently include increased operational efficiency (74%), improved customer experience (46%), and cost reduction (38%). The most common implementation strategy cited by enterprises was to establish a dedicated agentic AI team (37%) as a new cross-functional discipline. Data science (30%) and engineering teams (17%) still play a central role, but a new specialism is clearly emerging, suggesting long-term organisational shifts as a result of agentic AI adoption.

“We’ve seen this pattern before: the internet in the ’90s, cloud in the 2010s - and now it’s AI”, said Rory Blundell, CEO at Gravitee. “What makes this different is the complexity. These agents don’t just answer questions - they make decisions, act autonomously, and directly interact with core systems across an enterprise firm. They’re already reshaping how businesses operate. The shift from ‘how do we implement?’ to ‘how do we control this?’ is a positive one. But there’s still a growing gap between ambition and readiness. With some enterprises on track to be running more than 15 autonomous agents by year end, the risk of budget overruns, operational inefficiencies, and security gaps are very real. With the right governance, CIOs and business leaders have an immense opportunity to not only contain and prevent agent sprawl, but to strategically harness AI to drive measurable value and long-term impact across their organizations,” he adds.

R. Martin Chavez, a member of the Board of Directors of Alphabet Inc. and Vice Chairman of Sixth Street Partners, said: “We’re entering a new era where AI agents are rapidly growing in autonomy - they’re making decisions, executing tasks, and integrating across enterprise systems, at scale. The challenge isn’t whether to adopt them, but how to manage them safely, efficiently, and strategically. That’s why Gravitee is bringing leaders from McDonald’s, Google and other leading tech platforms together at the inaugural A2A Summit this November - to help enterprises unlock AI’s full potential without losing control.”

To support enterprise leaders navigating this transition, Gravitee will host the inaugural A2A Summit on November 6, 2025, in New York, in partnership with The Linux Foundation. The event will explore the future of agent-to-agent (A2A) orchestration and autonomous enterprise systems, bringing together technology leaders from Google, Microsoft, Gartner, and others to provide actionable insights to help organizations tackle agent sprawl and unlock the full potential of AI-driven decision-making.

To dive deeper into how organizations can tackle agentic AI governance, download the full Gravitee report. For more information and to attend the A2A Summit, visit https://a2asummit.ai

Nick Bennett
Gravitee
nicholas.bennett@graviteesource.com
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