Megatrends One Year Later – #1: Transformative AI – What I Predicted, and What’s Actually Happening

“The only thing we know for certain about AI is that we don’t know exactly where we are going, but we are making great time.” – Futurist Jim Carroll

One year ago, in June 2025, I published Megatrend #1: Transformative AI as part of my 30 Megatrends series. Time to grade myself.

Gartner says 80% of enterprise applications shipped or updated in Q1 2026 embed at least one AI agent — up from 33% in 2024. By the end of this year, 40% of enterprise apps will embed task-specific agents, up from under 5% in 2025.

But here’s the honest part: only 31% of enterprises actually have an AI agent in production, per S&P Global and McKinsey. Banking and insurance lead at 47%. Healthcare and government trail at 18% and 14%.

So the velocity was right. The embedding is happening at a ridiculous rate, exactly as I said. What I’d add a year later: the gap between shipping a feature and running it in production is now the story worth watching.

Verdict: Nailed the velocity. The only thing that’s changed about “we don’t know where we’re going”? We’re making even greater time.