Artificial intelligence is on track to take over the majority of global business purchasing, with Gartner forecasting that AI agents will intermediate more than $15 trillion in B2B spending by 2028.
It unveiled the projection at the Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo 2025. The Gartner projection signals one of the most far-reaching shifts in enterprise commerce in decades. It sees autonomous buying systems, machine-to-machine negotiation and data-verification frameworks as moving into the mainstream.
Gartner analysts issued 10 strategic predictions for 2026 and beyond. They warn that AI is accelerating faster than many organizations can manage. They also said it’s now redefining work, compliance, customer expectations and even legal exposure.
“The risks and opportunities of rapid technology change are increasingly affecting human behavior and choices,” said Daryl Plummer, Gartner vice president, distinguished analyst and chief of AI research. “To properly prepare for the future, CIOs and executive leaders should prioritize behavioral changes alongside technological changes as first-order priorities.”
Gartner findings indicate AI agents will challenge office tools
Among the firm’s most immediate projections is a $58 billion upheaval in productivity software. Gartner anticipates generative AI and autonomous agents challenging dominant office tools for the first time in 30 years. It expects legacy formats to decline in importance and vendors to shift more AI features into free tiers. That would intensify competition and lower barriers for new entrants.
The firm also forecasts sweeping changes to talent markets. By 2027, 75% of hiring processes will test AI proficiency. Meanwhile, 50% of global organizations will require “AI-free” assessments by 2026 to ensure candidates can demonstrate independent reasoning and critical-thinking skills without machine assistance. Gartner expects demand for hybrid human-AI judgment to rise fastest in high-stakes fields such as health care, finance and law.
Gartner predicts further fragmentation of the global AI landscape. It estimates 35% of countries will be locked into region-specific AI platforms by 2027 due to regulation, data sovereignty requirements and linguistic or cultural constraints. That shift will force multinational companies to manage multiple AI systems and compliance regimes across markets.
Customer experience will undergo similar change. By 2028, Gartner expects organizations using multiagent AI for 80% of customer-facing processes to outperform competitors as AI systems handle routine interactions and humans intervene only for complex or sensitive cases. Companies that fail to adopt these architectures, Gartner warned, risk falling behind as expectations continue shifting toward rapid, low-effort service.
How AI agents could change B2B procurement
The most dramatic transformation is expected in B2B procurement. According to Gartner, 90% of all B2B purchases will be handled by AI agents within three years, channeling more than $15 trillion in spending through automated exchanges. Such systems will rely on verifiable data feeds and standardized trust frameworks that allow agents to negotiate, contract and execute purchases at high frequency with minimal human intervention.
Legal exposure will rise in parallel. Gartner expects more than 2,000 “death by AI” claims by the end of 2026 tied to safety failures involving autonomous systems, prompting recalls, law-enforcement investigations and heightened regulatory pressure. Some companies may begin publicly emphasizing their level of AI reliance — or lack of it — to differentiate themselves and mitigate liability.
Financial systems will also shift. By 2030, Gartner forecasts that 20% of monetary transactions will be programmable, enabling autonomous commerce and machine-driven financing, though adoption will be slowed by inconsistent standards and security risks in programmable payment platforms.
Service delivery models will change as well. Gartner expects agentic AI to cut the cost-to-value gap in process-centric service contracts by at least 50% by 2027 as AI uncovers tacit knowledge and replaces standardized workflows with context-rich orchestration.
Regulators, meanwhile, are racing to keep pace. Gartner predicts fragmented AI laws will cover half of the world’s economies by 2027, driving an estimated $5 billion in compliance spending as organizations establish dedicated governance teams and deploy specialized oversight tools.
Gartner presented the predictions to thousands of CIOs and IT leaders gathered in Orlando for one of Gartner’s largest annual events.
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