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The State of AI in 2026: Shifting to the Agentic Era

McKinsey's 2026 State of AI: 88% of organizations now use AI in at least one function and 72% use generative AI, up from 33% in 2024. The frontier conversation has moved from generation to agency — 62% are experimenting with AI agents, 23% are scaling them.

McKinsey's latest State of AI survey marks the moment when the enterprise conversation shifts decisively from generative AI to agentic AI. The headline numbers: 88% of respondents say their organizations regularly use AI in at least one business function, and 72% use generative AI specifically — up from 33% in 2024.

The agentic shift is the real story. Sixty-two percent of organizations are at least experimenting with AI agents, and 23% have agentic systems running at production scale somewhere in the business. McKinsey frames this as the transition from AI that suggests to AI that does — autonomous workflow execution, not just decision support.

The scaling gap remains stark. Nearly two-thirds of organizations have not yet begun scaling AI across the enterprise; pilot projects outnumber productionized capabilities by a wide margin. Trust maturity is the other unsolved piece — strategy, governance, and risk frameworks for agentic AI lag well behind the deployments they're meant to guide.

Source: McKinsey. Read the full piece at https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/tech-and-ai/our-insights/tech-forward/state-of-ai-trust-in-2026-shifting-to-the-agentic-era.

← All news & insights Published March 12, 2026