Governance, Identity and Security

• Agents are the fastest growing, least governed enterprise identities
• Combined agent permissions create unplanned data leak paths
• Passing evaluations is separate from deciding what agents may do
• 82% of firms run unknown AI agents, widening shadow AI
• Druva shows scoped permissions and session isolation make agents governable
• Microsoft finds built in guardrails speed up agent scaling
• Frontier model governance needs independent validation

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Enterprise Architecture and Production Readiness

• Most enterprise agent failures are architecture failures
• Framework selection in 2026 is an architecture decision
• Agent reliability depends on the systems around the model
• Harness optimization can cut token costs by up to 70%
• Microsoft Foundry's observability kit catches silent agent failures
• The A2A protocol standardizes how agents delegate tasks
• Multi vendor collective intelligence is the next challenge

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Platform and Vendor Launches

• Oracle launches the AI Data Platform Agent Hub and Agent Memory
• Oracle introduces Fusion Companion and Agentic Home
• Microsoft moves its Copilot harness into Foundry
• Google launches a Connected Apps Store and open sources AX
• NVIDIA, Snowflake and SentinelOne build agent safety into the stack
• Horizon Context, Web IQ and Zoom Decisions APIs supply agent context
• Nokia unveils a sovereign agentic AI platform for telco networks

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Finance, ERP and Regulated Industries

• Agentic finance depends on a strong ERP system of record
• Accounting agents need evidence before gaining posting authority
• Agents that spend money need independent receipts and controls
• China's principles make banks the authorization layer for agents
• A proposed Chase agent card centers on owner defined guardrails
• Clinical agents need harnesses and clinician review

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Workforce and Operating Models

• Managers become governors of decision systems
• Agents need an HR like management structure
• Outdated human processes are the real bottleneck
• A 2040 finance organization keeps humans on top and agents in the middle
• Copilot adoption fails without a people focus
• Agentic recruiting depends on trust, not automation speed

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Applied Deployments

• Agents co wrote 94% of commits in a two month enterprise build
• Agentic software development becomes a continuous loop under guardrails
• A multi agent investment system moves from paper to live trading
• Agents simplify NVIDIA Jetson edge deployments
• A Slack AI employee turned LinkedIn analytics into a content strategy

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Research and Market Data

• Splunk finds observability essential for trusted agents
• BCG finds agents framed as employees cut error detection by 18%
• BCG finds half of CEOs tie job stability to AI success
• 80% of UK financial firms deploy agents, only 2% allow broad autonomy
• Shared models make agents hard to insure
• Research maps agentic inequality across availability, quality and quantity

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Thanks to Joanna Miler, Ashish Sahu, Shania Rasheed Nalagath, Jean Malaquias, Ahmed Ullah Quadri Syed, Nick Palomba, Shrey Shah, Egor Pushkin, Nitika Gupta, Karthik Chakravarthy, Tal Saraf, Nathan Stricker, Aishwarya Naresh Reganti, Gabriel Millien, Nandan Mullakara, Alistair Greenwood, Jothi Moorthy, Aiswarya Venkitesh, Yuri Diogenes, Jeetu Patel, Georg Glantschnig, Anurag(Anu) Karuparti, Kiran Bangalore, Senthil Indiran, Ruchika P., Kaushal Kurapati, Vijoy Pandey, Ashish Agarwal, Adhitya Vidyasankar, Jamal K., Santhosh Kumar Ravindran, Uday Sambhara, Subramanyam Iyer, Shafiq Mannan, Sean Galliher, ShiSh S., Tariq Munir, Andreas Horn, Anthony Alcaraz, Nikhil Kassetty, FAISAL HOQUE, Sigrid Berge van Rooijen, Sameer Penakalapati, Pradeep Sanyal, Chris Leone, Xuedong D. Huang, Jared Hall, Benjamin Arnulf, Abhishek Bhowmick, Manik Gangopadhyay, Sridhar Ramaswamy, Alex Sandu, Brian King, Barry Mostert, Kartik Talamadupula, Amogh Dendukuri, Apoorav Trehan, Chen Su, Smriti Mishra, Elliot Garreffa, Owain Lewis, Chuck Robbins, Joshua Miller, Hiroko Washiyama, Peter Slattery, Ben Torben-Nielsen, Pamela Fox, Farrukh Mobeen, Volker Jacobs, Yael Macias and everyone else who contributed insights to this edition. Find the full list of posts and voices on LinkedIn: