What Happens When Vendors Take the Lead on Agentic AI
CIO, Wednesday, October 28th, 2026
CIO examines companies adopting vendor-built agentic AI instead of building their own, including results and hidden costs.
Maria Korolov reports that many companies are adopting off-the-shelf agentic AI from vendors to reduce cost, complexity, and deployment time.
Fertitta Entertainment used PolyAI virtual assistants to cut call abandonment from 40-50 percent to under 10 percent, and Fogo de Chao reports all calls answered and bookings up about 10 percent.
Small firms such as 10-employee AltaClaro also build on vendor platforms.
The article warns of hidden costs including governance failures, rising token costs in production, and change management needs, citing a Gartner prediction that 40 percent of enterprises will demote or decommission agents over governance problems.