Are AI agents worth the investment?

Organisations that have started deploying AI agents are starting to see productivity gains at work, according to a new report, amid mounting questions about whether these tools are worth the investment.  

DigitalOcean's newest Currents report revealed that more than half (53%) of organisations deploying AI agents observed productivity and time savings for employees.  

Nearly a third (32%) of employers also said AI agents reduced the need to hire additional staff at work. Other outcomes from using AI agents include:  

• Creation of new business capabilities (44%)
• Measurable cost savings (27%)
• Improved customer experience (26%)  

According to the findings, 17% of organisations that implemented AI agents also observed a 25% to 50% increase in productivity. Others said they saw:  

• 11% to 25% increase (14%)
• 51% to 75% increase (9%)
• More than 75% increase  (9%)
• Improvements vary (7%)
• Too early to measure (14%)  

"Our findings show a gap between those who find real productivity gains from agents and those who aren't seeing the benefits just yet, suggesting that it's still early days for overall agent adoption," the report read.  

What are AI agents?  

AI agents refer to autonomous software systems that are powered by generative AI, which can take actions to achieve specific goals on behalf of users, according to Google Cloud.  

"They show reasoning, planning, and memory and have a level of autonomy to make decisions, learn, and adapt," it added.  

DigitalOcean's findings revealed that half of the respondents are already experimenting with or deploying AI agents.  

However, just 10% of them are scaling agents or see agents as core to their business strategy.  

"While the use of AI agents is on the rise, fully autonomous production deployment is still at early stages of readiness," the report read.  

In fact, 40% of AI agents remain under the control of humans at work. Only 10% of organisations are deploying agents autonomously, while 20% run them semi-autonomously.  

But AI agents' momentum in the workplace is expected to continue, according to the findings.  

Some 38% of respondents who have not yet explored AI agents said they will start experimenting or deploying agents in 2026.  

Another 37% of respondents said they expect their AI budget growth to be focused on applications and agents.  

"Don't want until AI agents are widespread to start using them," the report read. "At a minimum, start experimenting now. Then, start [planning] how to go from experiments to production workflows to hit the ground running in 2026."  

"The likely outcome of getting started not is achieving the productivity gains and new business opportunities that first-mover organisations are already benefiting from."  

DigitalOcean's report garnered more than 1,100 respondents from more than 100 countries, including the US, the UK, Canada, India, and Germany.