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The age of artificial intelligence working independently is upon us as two tech behemoths — AI chip leader Nvidia and IT service giant Accenture — on Wednesday announced a partnership that promises to bring more agentic AI to businesses.
Agentic AI systems are a type of artificial intelligence that can achieve goals and make decisions without direct human supervision — planning actions, breaking down complex tasks, analyzing sensory input, making predictions, and even interacting with other systems. The technology promises to boost productivity and control labor costs.
While GenAI launched an enterprise arms race to adopt AI, agentic AI could be the technology that really transforms the enterprise. According to a report from Emergen Research, the agentic market is valued at $30.89 billion in 2024 and has an expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31.68%. North America makes up about 20% of the total market.
“AI will supercharge enterprises to scale innovation at great speed,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said in a statement. “Nvidia’s platform, Accenture’s AI Refinery, and our combined expertise will help businesses and nations accelerate this transformation to drive unprecedented productivity and growth.”
Accenture is equally bullish on the technology. In a statement, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said the collaboration will benefit businesses — many of which are already investing in AI. “Accenture AI Refinery will create opportunities for companies to reimagine their processes and operations, discover new ways of working, and scale AI solutions across the enterprise …”
Big Plans for Agentic AI
Nvidia has become the dominant AI chipmaker, and the technology was a big part of the company’s soaring revenue, which hit $60 billion in fiscal year 2024, up from $12 billion in 2019. Mizuho Securities estimates that Nvidia controls between 70% and 95% of the AI chip market.
Accenture said it is dedicating about 30,000 workers globally to the newly formed business group. They said that will be achieved through a mix of training and upskilling existing employees and possibly new hires, though they declined to offer specifics.
On a press call, Lan Guan, Accenture’s chief AI officer, said the company recorded $3 billion in bookings driven by GenAI demand, but “many business organizations did not see the full benefits of GenAI yet … We believe the next wave of agentic AI will be a huge step forward and will be a game-changer in how our clients reinvent their business.”
Answering a question from InformationWeek about how the partnership could drive new hires, Guan said the company is “always looking for new talent from the marketplace.”
Nvidia’s Justin Boitano, vice president of enterprise AI solutions, said GenAI has sparked about $1 trillion in overall market investment. The company, he said, expects that trend to extend to other AI systems as well. “Our financial incentive in this, obviously, is that we will sell more GPUs into the data center,” he said.
Agentic AI’s Ethical and Safety Concerns
While businesses are likely excited about the potential for cost savings, AI ethicists are concerned about the potential to cause a mass disruption in the workforce as AI gains the ability to replace human employees. While GenAI experienced a leap forward thanks to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, GenAI’s capabilities are limited to the input from a human user. With agentic AI, no prompting is necessary.
That could be a problem for workers.
Fears about automation were among the concerns that prompted the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA), the country’s largest union for port workers, to organize a walkout this week. Thirty-six ports along the East Coast in the Gulf of Mexico were impacted and the strike will weaken the country’s supply chain and could cost billions of dollars in lost revenue.
Laborers are aware of the job loss potential of automation — the auto industry shed tens of thousands of jobs as robots took over manual labor tasks. But IT professionals who were once insulated from automation concerns may find themselves in a similar position as agentic AI gains the ability to complete complex tasks on its own.
Daniel Colson, executive director of Artificial Intelligence Policy Institute, says agentic AI poses existential risks beyond that of current GenAI models.
“This is a totally new paradigm of AI development, and it’s subject to its own exponential scaling laws,” Colson tells InformationWeek in a phone interview. He likened the corporate world’s interest in agentic AI to the movie, “Don’t Look Up,” which is about a comet heading towards earth that no one can agree is real or not.
“It’s about how difficult it is to accept when you’re in one of those kinds of scenarios. And I think we’re in one of those scenarios, unfortunately … Agentic AI systems come with totally unprecedented risks, as well as opportunities.”