More Than Two-Thirds of US Companies to Replace Staff with AI Agents Before the End of 2026, Study from Gravitee Finds

New research from global API management expert Gravitee finds that companies are shifting to an Agentic AI workforce rapidly

NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES, October 8, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Research by Gravitee, the leader in API, event and AI management, has found that nearly two-thirds of American companies plan to replace staff with AI agents before the end of 2026. Most companies plan to ‘employ’ 16-20 agents in that timeframe, which could add more than 1.2 million AI agents to the US workforce. Executives will need to build the proper infrastructure and guardrails - focusing on security, interoperability, and governance - in order to scale under control.

In this latest survey, which surveyed 250 C-suite executives at companies with more than 200 employees, more than 75% of companies plan to have more than 15 AI agents deployed before the end of 2026, with most predicting they will have 16-20 agents. Each respondent indicated they would deploy at least one agent. While two-thirds of the companies surveyed responded that they would be reducing headcount, slightly more than 20% indicated they would be increasing headcount to support AI agents.

“Agentic AI will offer a huge productivity boom to firms of all sizes, with AI agents completing rote, repetitive tasks while workers are freed up to focus on more interesting challenges,” said Rory Blundell, CEO at Gravitee.

“However, it’s clear that, at least in the short term, there’s a risk of widespread job cuts until companies know how to balance the investment with the return, which may be shortsighted. Not least because AI Agents, without proper governance, can cause widespread chaos and disruption. It was reassuring to see that nearly a quarter of companies actually plan to increase their headcount to support agentic AI expansion: these are the companies that see the human-AI connection as a value unlock, not as a trade-off. Just as the Industrial Revolution and then the internet created completely new types of jobs, I expect we will see the same in this AI Revolution.”

With more than 75,000 companies in the U.S. employing more than 250 employees, on average, there will be 1.2 million more AI agents across the ecosystem by the end of 2026. As organizations move from experimental mode with agentic AI to building agent-first systems and changing its workforce, they must establish clear policies and oversight, implement discoverable and machine-readable APIs, adopt event-driven architectures for real-time agent reactions, and deploy proactive controls such as rate limits, analytics, and monitoring from the outset. Without these foundational elements, AI cannot deliver value and instead creates vulnerabilities, where a single rogue agent can swiftly lead a company out of control without the proper setup.

To support enterprise leaders navigating this transition, Gravitee will host the inaugural A2A Summit on November 6, 2025, in New York, in partnership with The Linux Foundation. The event will explore the future of agent-to-agent (A2A) orchestration and autonomous enterprise systems, bringing together technology leaders from Google, Microsoft, Gartner, and others to provide actionable insights to help organizations tackle agent sprawl and unlock the full potential of AI-driven decision-making.

-ENDS-

About Gravitee
Gravitee, with a valuation of over $300m, is the open-source leader in Agentic API & Event Management. The Gravitee platform empowers enterprises to design, secure, and govern APIs, event streams, and AI-driven interactions across hybrid, multi-cloud, and edge environments. With a federated, agent-ready approach and native support for real-time traffic and autonomous agents via the Gravitee Agent Mesh, Gravitee enables secure, scalable, and intelligent connectivity in an increasingly complex ecosystem.
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About the survey
This research was conducted in September 2025 and is based on a survey of 500 technology leaders of companies with 250 or more employees: 250 based in North America.

Nick Bennett
Gravitee
nicholas.bennett@graviteesource.com

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